Prisoners of the Void
by Skylark Evanson
Summary: Gwen is thrown into the Null Void and is forced to live four years of her life in there. With Kevin 11.
1. Prologue

**A/N: this story was requested by Crushed Hale.x and now I shall write it. and now that my iPod touch is being a glitchy lil crap hole, I gotta read it on ma tuch and type it out…**

**Alternate ending to the episode 'Truth' from the first series.**

**Disclaimer: rawr. Great. I still don't own Ben 10.**

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**Prolouge**

"Gwen!" His eyes widened in horror as he saw his cousin fall into the yellow portal just as a Null Guardian was making it's way out of the other side. Ben knew he had to get Gwen back no matter what it took. His hand slammed down on the Omnitrix and a four armed monster appeared in his place as he frantically began to race to the portal.

It was closing slowly and the Guardian was coming down upon him with fierce shrieks and cries of war. The tentacles wrapped around Ben tightly to squeeze the life from him and he was thrown down to the cold, black street by the creature's brute force.

The portal kept closing.

Ben struggled against the monster until he couldn't fight any longer and he went limp only to have the creature's tentacles tighten around his body. With a burst of fury, he broke the Guardian's grasp with a fierce explosion of power from all four arms pushing outward at once. His golden glowing eyes checked on the portal's rate of change…

But he saw nothing.

And the projector fell over the edge of the bridge, falling into the abyss of water below, never to be found again.

"GWEN!"

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**A/N: review!**

**~Sky**


	2. Savior

**A/N: wow, I really feel like writing another chapter of this. It's so hard 'cause this plot is actually very distracting. I'm having a hard time of thinking of other things right now… Gwen's POV**

**Disclaimer: own nothing. Idea is Crushed Hale.x's.**

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I crashed against the cold ground of the musty red land around me. My body seemed to give way to the cold ground, falling into it as crimson dust sprinkled around me, getting all over my skin and turning me a deep reddish color so that I was hardly the same pale girl anymore.

My head rattled as I coughed, gasping for fresh air in the puff of red dirt clotting around me and I pressed myself off the ground, hoping for a chance of better breathing, but it only became increasingly more musty as I rose to my feet. I staggered for a moment, leaning against a rock to try and gain some ounce of balance. I ended up standing there quietly for a long time until the dust cleared. I must've just landed in a patch of that dust because as my view cleared, I had a bit more of a look around the empty portal I had been dumped through.

The world around me was stretched out in red, the sky dark maroon and purple in places and rocks were everywhere. More rocks were hanging above me as if suspended by string. It was empty beyond belief and cold and lifeless.

I gave one last cough and looked around a little harder for the portal that I had fallen through, looking for the golden shine of it.

There was none.

My heart sank to my stomach and I knew I was going to have a bit of a hard time now because I wasn't getting back to Earth and civilization anytime soon. So I looked around for shelter, knowing I needed it. I carefully pushed off the rock, finally able to walk and peered around the other side, coming face to face with a massive blue creature with a cloak of blue edged with black around it.

A short scream escaped me before a few more were suddenly surrounding me, each of them blue with massive green eyes that were almost bug-like. I couldn't believe that I had just gotten here and I was already going to be dead in less than five minutes.

At the sound of my shriek, one snapped off the cloak, it transforming into massive wings with pointed tips and jagged edges. The body was lithe and well-muscles for obvious fighting and a strange cold was coming off of them as they surrounded me, my only defense the massive rock that I was still standing beside.

Fear welled inside of me as I pressed myself to the large red stone. I was only ten. And I was already going to die. Great. I wasn't even ready to die. I still had to win a Nobel Peace Prize yet.

The creatures moved in, their voices whispered and murmuring as they talked to each other in a language too foreign for me to even try to translate. Their buggy emerald eyes were staring at me like I was a prize to be won or a treasure at the end of the pirate's map. Or like the way a wolf's eyes narrowed in intense hunger as they spotted their prey.

I kicked at the dust and it rose in all their eyes, sending them coughing and spluttering. I had held my breath the best I could and ran as fast as possible out of the circle of them to head off to a hiding place or shelter if I could do the best I could. I searched hopefully for a shelter to hide in, but saw nothing in the immediate range that I could get to fast enough to be protected from the blue creatures.

Checking over my shoulder I saw nothing. They had all vanished. Panic overwhelmed me and I began to look around desperately, knowing they could be anywhere. I looked up and didn't see anything but the red sky stretching out endlessly above me, no way out in sight. I looked around one more time only to see the creatures rising out of the ground and coming after me slowly in their slow flight.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. My head pounded and I prayed for a simple solution to this other than my death.

The creatures were making a series of clicking noises that I assumed were them talking. Or threatening me. Either one sounded just as bad as the other. I couldn't help the fear that boiled inside of me. I was horrified of my coming death. I wasn't ready to be dead yet.

Suddenly, a war cry came from behind me and I could hear heavy footfalls. I didn't have time to turn around before a hulking figure was leaping over my head, wings carrying it a little bit further than it probably should've gone. It landed perfectly on top of one of the blue creatures and it's tail flipped so that it swatted down another one. Then a fist and then another one hit the final two. It seemed like there were more of them than there really were. I guess that's what happens why the prey is surrounded.

The newcomer was standing on the blue alien while it pounded the other three, saying some words every few minutes that sounded like death threats. I couldn't pick out the exact words, but I knew it was English. And I realized that I wasn't alone in this place of Hell. The aliens were taking a harsh beating, one of them vanishing effortlessly by going through the ground and disappearing. Then one flitted away into the cold, infinite sky.

Two were left and the hulking form was making sure they got what was coming to them. He kept hitting them and hitting them and I saw that one of them wasn't moving anymore and that the other one was trying to disappear through the ground since it couldn't fly off with one of the silky blue wings torn off. And it vanished quietly into the cold red dirt.

There were no more left.

I could finally breathe again, the panic no longer clenching my chest in an iron fist of a cage. I could let the relief wash over me without being worried again. Whoever this was had saved me from a horrible death and from a horrible moment of pain that would've surely come upon me.

The massive creature picked up my blue attacker and the ripped wing that the other blue thing had left behind. It tossed the body over one shoulder and carried the wing like a cloth over one arm. Then it turned.

My heart froze in my chest. "Kevin?" I asked, my voice soft and quaking with gentle fear.

He looked at me, his expression not at all confused in the slightest. He didn't even say anything as he came closer to me. "Need a place to stay?" he asked me, his voice still harsh as ever, but I knew he meant to sound nice. I guess a long time in the Null Void had kind of sent him into a streak of meanness on his behalf.

I just nodded silently, scared to speak to him.

"You can stay with me for a little while," he said, walking right past me, the body still over his shoulder. But he tossed the leathery wing to me. "It's cold. You should keep warm."

The blue wing hit me gently and I realized it was like a blanket. I pulled it over my shoulders and I followed Kevin as he walked further into the distance. I shuffled through the dust and dirt, just following him because he was my only hope in life right now. He was all I had to rely on. And when I had a criminal to rely on, I knew I was in trouble.

But I followed Kevin, the blue wing draped over me. It was the only thing I had now.

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**A/N: there's chapter two. Thanks for reading! Now it's time to review!**

**~Sky**


	3. Circle of Stones

**A/N: well it's been a horribly long day (I've been on a computer, but really, doing biology sucks. I put it off until today and that didn't go over well, clearly) so I decided I needed a ten/twenty/thirty/however-long-I-decide-to-make-it minute break. So in my spare time, this. Gwen's POV**

**Disclaimer: own nothing.**

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The cave was a massive hole in the ground that led into a tunnel down to a space that widened and lengthened, big enough to fit Kevin's hulking form without it being awkward for him to move or stand. His wings had to remain folded tightly against his back to prevent them from scraping against the top.

It was unnaturally warm, like a living, breathing sauna. I stared around in wonder at the piles of wings exactly like the one around me that looked like a mountain of blankets. The stones placed in a circle in the main open space. There was what looked like a fire pit, rocks surrounding it in a messy formation.

I didn't comment at all. I knew that in a place as desolate as the Null Void, this must've been a palace fit for a king.

"It's not much," said Kevin, making me turn to face him out of fear that he would try to kill me, "but this is home." He gestured around, making me take another look at it before I gazed back at him, hearing the scuffing of his feet against the cold dirt ground.

Kevin was leaving.

"Where are you going?" I asked, panic evident in my voice. My eyes were huge as I clutched the wing tighter to me, finding it a comfort now in this prison. "Don't just leave me here!" I sounded pitiful. Pathetic, to say the least. Fear was closing in on me as I took a step towards him, eager to follow so that I couldn't get left behind. I didn't want to be left behind down here. I didn't know if the blue creatures were coming back for me. I didn't want them to come back for me. I had to stick with Kevin. He was my only protection.

"I'm just going to put a rock over the entrance. Don't want any unexpected guests dropping in." He looked back at me, his face looking like it was trying to smile, but seemed incapable of showing the simplest emotions. "Null Guardians like to check up on everyone. I don't like 'em droppin' in on my place."

I just stood there in silence as he vanished. I kept my eyes wide open, not blinking. I didn't want one of those creatures coming out of the walls. I didn't want to see any of them coming to get me. Fear was radiating through me. I kept looking over my shoulders for any signs of them. I didn't want anything sneaking in.

The sound of something covering the entrance came. The scuffing of Kevin's feet came back down through the long tunnel. His deep red form appeared in the newly found darkness of the cave, his fiery Heatblast arm the only form of any light. The glow was cast across the warm brown walls. A coughing laugh came from him as he saw me. "You look like you're about to wet your pants," he said.

I probably looked like a chicken in the paws of a fox. "I didn't know if you were coming back," I whimpered. "I didn't know if those blue things were coming after me again." The wing was wrapped against my shoulders tightly and I felt tears pricking at my eyes.

His wicked smile faded. "Don't worry," he said, voice soft with that harsh tone still there. I figured he was kind of stuck with it. "I won't leave you again."

I gave a silent nod, just staring at his form in the darkness. His hulking body began to move to the darker part of the room and he reached down to pick something up that looked like large pieces of driftwood. He piled up a few in his Wildmutt arms and moved to drop them in the center of the fire pit circle of rocks. Then he shot a small blast from his fiery arm that shot a tiny flame. That lit the cracked and dry wood on fire, bringing more light to the entire space. It entranced me with its welcoming warmth.

"By the way," he said, bringing me from my realm of joy in the heat, "those are called Necrofriggins. Just so you know. Not 'blue things' or whatever you would've called 'em." He sat on a log on one side of the fire, his blue and black striped tail curving close to the back of it. His wings were still pressed tightly to his back and his fangs were barely visible. "You okay?"

I nodded, but just barely. On the inside, I was nowhere near okay.

"You can sit down." One of his clawed Wildmutt fingers pointed to a small, flattish rock that was a few feet away from me. I didn't really realize how big this cave was. "I don't bite."

I did sit a moment later, my gaze still locked on him. I was just going through the motions, focused on what was happening around me more than what I was actually doing. "Thanks, Kevin," I breathed, knowing that he was my life-source now. He was all I had to rely on for survival.

"It's not a problem," he said, a small, crooked half-smile playing across his mangled features. "It gets lonely here. Takin' someone in is helping you and helping me. It's kind of a win-win." He poked at the fire with his Heatblast arm. I winced as he touched it, still reeling from the fact that fire couldn't hurt one who was already a flame. "Besides, I gotta get some karma points back and all, right?"

It was the most amazing thing when I could stare into the brightly blazing fire, hearing Kevin's words in his harsh, throaty voice, and just smile at them. Like I could smile every other day of my life. Smiling in a hell-hole. Who would've thought?

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**A/N: this chapter was a bit shorter, but I had to get this part in because I wanted to get some detail about the Null Void. Next chapter, we'll get back to the good stuff, but for now, you go click the cute blue button and review because I said so. Thank you.**

**~Sky**


	4. Fallen Angels

**A/N: wow, this has taken a little longer than I had hoped, but whatever. I do the best I can. And this is in some insane detail so I work as fast as I can.**

**Disclaimer: idea is by Crushed Hale.x, written by moi, and characters are owned by MOA**

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Kevin moved the rock and the two of us moved out into the world above once more after a long night's rest. His features seemed to have severely softened after sleeping on the pile of wings. He had given me enough to make a nice, comfortable bed for myself before crashing on the pile that I assumed was his own bed. He snored like a chainsaw, but I was too tired to care. I was too grateful to have him to even think of complaining.

The red light bathed over us as we walked up into the landscape. Kevin moved the rock back over the entrance, his muscles and tendons straining as he pushed it. I watched him for the longest moment until the large stone covered the entrance. Then Kevin turned back to me, sweat lacing his brow and began to move into the distance, me close behind him, a wing still covering me like a shawl.

"We got a long day. We won't get back there 'til real late. Full twelve hours 'round here, even though it doesn't always feel like it." His hulking form kept lumbering along, the color of his body blending in like a natural camouflage, the only things standing out were his tail and his wings against the harsh, blood-red landscape. "Think you can deal with that?"

I nodded quietly, focusing on keeping up with him and watching out for any signs of attackers that lurked in the shadows like a wolf watching its prey. I clutched the wing tighter to me with a shiver. I'd have to make myself some warm clothes eventually. My tattered and torn jeans and kitty shirt wouldn't last long here.

"You can speak," he said, voice containing a touch of a throaty laugh. He looked back at me slightly, his pair of golden eyes that were a clear trait of Fourarms glistening with amusement. "Nodding won't get me to save you in a fight out here. I can't spend every second watching over you."

"I know," I mumbled, shuffling along quickly to keep up with him. "I just... I'm not sure what to say around here. You're the master and I'm the apprentice." I looked up at him, his ebony hair striking against the dark crimson sky that lingered above us. "I have to learn from you to survive out here."

He paused and I stood next to him, wondering if he was worried over what I had said. His face seemed twisted in fear or panic. I blinked, hoping he didn't fear me leaving him. I didn't want to leave him. I needed someone to be with. No matter how much I hated Ben, he had always been like my best friend. In a weird sort of cousinly way. I needed a companion. And as Kevin had revealed the night before, he needed one too. Just as much as I did. We relied on each other for company, although I needed him for so much more than just that.

My gaze remained on him as he stayed frozen in that one spot. Minutes passed. His body was rigid. "Don't. Move." His tone was a strong but hushed hiss. "They're watching us."

My grip tightened on be wing around me and I held it tightly, praying for some miracle to save me. I knew I was going to die here. And if not in that very moment, I would die in the depths of the Null Void. I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I would die and that would be that. My whole life would be ruined before I could live it to the fullest.

Without warning, Kevin's Heatblast arm shot out a massive blaze around us, setting fire in a perfect circle. His lips were curled up in a vicious snarl as multiple Necrofriggins turned visible just outside the ring of licking and lapping flames. They all winced away from the heat and sudden bright light. He snarled at them, thrashing his arms in all directions.

They scattered, but only for moments. They all came around closer again, presing against the edges of the flames, and hissed at us. I pressed myself behind Kevin, feeling intense heat radiating off of him as if he himself were the blaze. One of his hands reached back and pushed me tighter against his body. "Back OFF!" he howled, the cry shattering the silence that had consisted of the quiet crackling blaze only moments ago.

The group of them all backed off for another long moment. Then closed back in on the flame again. Kevin kept me tucked tight against his large frame. "Stay away from her," he snarled, sounding feral in the quiet. He shot out more flames, this time directly striking a creature, sending it crumpling to the ground before it soaked into the russet colored dust.

I felt panic welling up in my throat, one hand against Kevin's skin for comfort. My other hand was clasping the blue and black wing to the base of my neck as I tried not to scream out or cry. Fear knotted my insides together in a giant ball and Kevin kept shooting away at them with the blaze of Heatblast's flames.

Something came from the ground beneath me and I found one of the Necrofriggins standing right in front of me, hissing and snarling like a rabid cat. A cry welled in the back of my throat but wasn't released until the creature's long blue claws gripped my arm tightly before flying up into the scarlet sky. I felt sharp, digging pain slice up my arm and a fiery pain flood my veins. I cried out and I could hear the faint swish of Kevin's hair as his head swiveled to see me being carried off.

I cried out again as a hand clamped around my ankle. I closed my eyes, wishing it all to end right there so that I didn't have to suffer another day of maddening torture. My body was being pulled in two different directions and blood spilled from my forearm.

For some reason unknown to me, the Necrofriggin released my wrist, the blood still dribbling down it as I fell directly into Kevin's warm arms. He held me tightly to his chest as I clutched my injured arm to my own. His fiery blazes drove through the flames, canceling out the ring around us. His bulky body pushed through the fire, his wings flickering and flitting. Then his feet began to run and within seconds we were right outside the rock.

A mere moment passed as he looked back, the fire out of view. Then he carefully used the two arms that weren't holding me in his tight grasp to push the rock out of the way. I saw sweat touch his brow once more before it moved off the entrance down into the cave. Then he slowly carried me down into its warm, welcoming depths.

I felt myself placed on my pile of wings as he pulled a rock over to sit on. He had a wing in one massive hand and he gingerly took my hand. Reluctantly, I extended my arm so that he could see the full extent of the wound that ran down my forearm.

That was when I got a full look at it. The claws had ripped the tendons of my inner arm and I could faintly see the white glow of the bone. A gasp escaped me as tears welled in my eyes, the pain setting in as I saw the ripped and shredded muscles beneath my torn and tattered skin. Dirt laced the flesh around it and I looked away.

Kevin's hand ran over the tear in my skin. Then he took the wing of a Necrofriggin from one hand and began to wrap it around my forearm with precise care. His large fingers moved deftly and it was soon bandaged and held fast by a ring of Diamondhead's crystal-like metal that fit around my arm like a tight bracelet. He created a few more of those to be sure that it was held in place.

For the longest time, I sat there and cried. I cried quietly. I cried like a little baby, pain finally swallowing me whole. It wasn't because my of my injury or because I was going to be scarred for life from this one battle. It was all the anguish that built up inside of me from the past days finally boiling over and driving out of me in a flood as strong as the one God had sent upon the world, saving only Noah and his family. My sobbing racked my body, letting out the pent up anger and depression that had been hidden inside of me all this time. My mind ached in the knowing that I wasn't going to be saved. Ben wasn't coming after me. I hated him for that. I missed him for that. I wasn't going to see Grandpa Max again. I may never see my Nobel Peace Prize. I was just going to die in this hole in the ground with a monster as my only friend. Kevin was all I had. And I had wanted so much more by the end of my life. The crying must've lasted for a few hours because all I knew was the pain that seared my heart and mind. My body let it flow. I couldn't hold back the tears. The agony was too great. I was losing everything before I even had it.

Later, when I looked back, Kevin was sitting on the other side of the cave, a fire now roaring in the circle of stones. His eyes were concentrated on it as if it were the only thing in the world he had to live for. And my arm was neatly patched up. I couldn't help but look at it and think that it was actually very pretty the way that it was decorated like that. Crystal-like diamonds over a blue and black cloth. Like an arm warmer sort of. With diamonds on it.

My eyes found Kevin again and I said two words to him.

"Thank you."

He smiled softly before looking back to the fire, the smile still upon his lips in a weaker form. We were still trapped in a prison of angels and demon under a bloodshot sky of red.

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**A/N: honestly, I'm shocking myself with how good this is turning out. May be one of my best works yet. Give me your thoughts and comments in a review! Thanks!**

**~Sky**


	5. After Silence

**A/N: So this keeps on getting more and more reviews. But the request I was sent, wasn't exactly this. There was more to it. And I have to get to it. Soon. Now to answer a few reviews:**

**ParamoreXO: no worries ^.^ you know how I am with my Gwevin.**

**magykgyrl16: then you would say props to Crushed Hale.x. I just write it.**

**And all the others were just the basic 'update soon!', which I love because it makes me feel loved.**

**Disclaimer: Idea is Crushed Hale.x's, author is moi, Skylark Evanson, and Man of Action owns all the characters.**

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Weeks had probably passed since she had spoken to me last, just those words of gratitude. She allowed me to go places without her. She laid in her bed most days, too tired or pained to move much. She ate little. She wouldn't even wrap herself in a wing anymore to keep warm.

It was hard to say, but I was worried about her.

Emotions aren't something that the criminals here in the Null Void come across very often. And when I felt them, I had sent myself into a shell shock.

All Gwen did was nod and sigh and cry herself to sleep every night, leaving me to miserably pretend that I too was asleep in my own resting spot in our hole in the ground. She amazed me how bravely she had taken it without a weapon in hand or a focus in mind.

She had cast a spell over me; she made me do things I had once never imagined possible. Gwen had made me care. And that wasn't an easy thing to do.

When she finally spoke, it was out of nowhere.

"What are your plans to get out of here?"

I looked up from staring into the fire to see her sitting up and looking at me intently with those electrifyingly green eyes. She created a big distraction for me, her red hair always grabbing my attention; her eyes always pulling me right out of my raging thoughts.

"I don't really have any," I confessed. "I figured I'd just ride out the storm and hope for the best." I reached one hulking arm up to ruffle my hair a little bit. Her eyes were making me feel guilty for not trying to break myself out of here. "The Null Void... it sort of turned into my home."

Her eyes suddenly turned from their original state of lifeless and dull to determined and blood-thirsty without a moment's notice. "Kevin, we have lives to live outside of this Hell-hole!" She threw her arms up in the air, a slightly pained expression coming over her face as her eyes flickered to her injured arm before returning to me. "You've got a family out there and I know you do. I have my grandpa and my brother and my cousin and my parents and school and I, for one, want to get back."

I opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off. I wasn't upset about it. After such a long silence, she was bound to be vocal and eager. And I wasn't about to take the words from her. She could talk as long as she liked. It meant I'd have to talk less.

"And if you don't want to get back to Earth and back to civilization for your family, then how about for baseball or football or friends or the future that you could have? You've learned a lot from here! Survival is something that people put on television! They're some of the most popular shows out there!" She took a long breath. Her emerald eyes pierced me eagerly. "Or maybe for someone out there who's looking for their soulmate. Everyone has someone. She's probably out there searching right now. And you're here, living this horrible life in a pit underground when you could be out there with her and with people."

People. The mention of the word reminded me what I had turned into. "I know, but I'm still an outsider. I'm still different than anyone. No one ever accepts monsters." My gaze had shifted from her back to the blaze that lay between us. "And inside, I'm always going to be a monster. Once a monster, always a monster." I poked a stick into the fire, watching the flames eat it right out of my hands as if it were a raw steak in the jaws of a starving dog.

"Don't look at it that way," she scolded. "Be positive. You're not a monster." The redhead had regained my attention; I found my eyes almost immediately back on her. "You saved me from being killed. You healed my arm."

"It's still mangled and mashed to beat Hell," I reminded her harshly, stabbing at the fire again with another stick, the sparks jumping off of it, small rabbits scattering in all directions. Then my gaze trailed back up to her. "You're not even near healed."

"But I'm alive," she breathed hopefully. Then, to my surprise, Gwen stood up on thin, shaky legs and came over to my side of the fire and sat beside me on the long log. I made sure my tail wasn't in her way so that she had plenty of space. This had to be the closest we'd been since she got here except for when I rescued her or caught her from falling in midair. "That's what counts. Sure, I'm not perfect. None of us really are. But I'm still alive. I'm still going to make it through this if you'll help me. And together, we'll find a way out."

Her eyes eagerly awaited my answer with a scared glow to them, her mind clearly fearing the rejection that she was sure would follow.

I thought over her words, about someone out there waiting for me while I sat contently in my hole. No one should have to wander the Earth alone. Not me. Not Gwen. No one.

So I asked, "What plans do you have in mind?"

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**A/N: now we're getting back on track to the request. So now you know what to do. Review it!**

**~Sky**


	6. Power Surge

**A/N: another chapter. shorter, but this is really all i need in here. Back in Gwen's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I own no part of Ben 10. This plot was sent in by Crushed Hale.x**

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The next day, we found ourselves in some serious trouble again. More Necrofriggins surrounded us. They were practically everywhere. "Kevin, what in the world did you do to piss them off this bad?" I asked, hanging onto him tightly and hoping he could protect me in a fight. "It's like there's a nest of them somewhere!"

He shot me a sheepish smile over one broad shoulder. "The cave... it's really nice, isn't it?"

"You took a nest from a bunch of monsters and you assume they won't attack you again to get it back?" I growl through gritted teeth as they close in on us. "Kevin, I want to hit you but you're the only thing keeping me alive around here."

"Oh, thanks a lot. That's good for my ego." A choked, hoarse laugh escaped him only a millisecond beforeI saw him topple to the ground as one of the Necrofriggins finished passing through him, his body turning cold as ice under the one hand that I kept on him for comfort and safety. One pass through him was enough to send him to the dusty, red ground.

"KEVIN!" I cried out, clutching to his fallen body desperately as the hissing, clicking cerulean-colored creatures closed in on their prey. My emerald eyes found him again. "Come on, Kevin," I begged to his unconscious body. "Come on, please, Kevin." I looked up at the Necrofriggins as they kept snarling and growling at me with bared teeth. "I need you now."

When I realized he wasn't waking up anytime soon, I turned to find a monster breathing down my neck. Fear clutched my throat and I held my hands out frantically as a pathetic form of defense with my eyes shut tight in panic.

Power seemed to surge from within me and I felt my body jolt backwards, falling onto Kevin's slowly warming form and feeling his now heated skin against mine. A dull, thrumming headache worked its way into my skull and I blinked open one eye into the world of bloody crimson.

All the Necrofriggins lay around us in a stunned circle. They lay flat to the ground, scarcely moving except the air drawn into their lungs.

Confused, I stared at my palms. A light blue tint was fading from them. And I blinked a few times, seeing the creatures rising again. They were hissing.

"Come on, Kevin," I begged, shaking his large, limp body. I would've done whatever I did again if only I knew how I did it in the first place. "Please get up. Please, Kevin. Please."

When I looked up at the Necrofriggins again, they were all backing away. They were all collecting each other and walking off with snarls and growls and hisses directed back at me. Their wings wrapped around their lithe, slender bodies. And the silent retreat ensued, the blue beings trudging off to find another place to call home.

Kevin's head lifted. "I got 'em, right?" he asked, sounding a bit delusional or delirious. "They gone?"

"Um... Yeah," I told him, unsure on how to say "I somehow sent out a blue blast that knocked them all down and then they got pissed and walked away". "Let's go with that," I finished, stepping back to give him room to get up without his wings or tail slapping into me.

He rose to his feet, shaking himself out. "You did something," he remarked almost knowingly, "didn't you?" His eyes were focused on me intently, anticipating a good answer.

I just nodded, speechless as to what exactly I did. I would've loved to explain it to him and see the shock crawl across his fanged features if only I knew what it was and how to describe the pulsing headache that now throbbed at my brain.

"What did you do?" he questioned, eyes boring through me like lasers and turning me into Swiss cheese.

"Ha. That's the best question I've heard all day."

And our lives in the Null Void went on, me finding magical powers and us becoming closer, stronger, and teaming up to find a way out of this Hellhole dimension.

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**A/N: ah, no worries, I got the rest of this pretty well worked out in my head. Be grateful, or else this would be a slow-going story. Now review or die!**

**~Sky**


	7. Wretched

**A/N: another chapter to be up! And I'm slowly counting the chapters until the real plot is thrown out into the open… Kevin's POV**

**Disclaimer: I own no part of this. Characters by Man Of Action and plot by Crushed Hale.x**

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She stared at me like the monster I was, eyes wide and threatened almost. "Quit asking me how I did that!" she said, voice with a sharp and biting edge to it. If she hadn't been sitting across the fire from me, I had a good feeling I would've been slugged in the shoulder by that point. "I have no clue, Kevin! I don't know what I did!" Her hands were thrown up in the air with exasperation. "I would tell you if I knew."

"I know," I replied coolly, trying to keep calm. Trust was essential. Even after being trapped in the Null Void for nearly three years together. And we were still going over the surge of power that hadn't come back since she saved our lives from the pack of Necrofriggins. "I know you'd tell me, Gwen. I just want to see if it could provide us a portal out or something, that's all."

Her teeth began to grind together, fury touching her roughened features. She had picked up some angry traits from me in all the time we'd spent here. And she had gone from a petite little girl to a lithe, agile warrior of the red plains that stretched across the open spans of the Null Void. "I can't do a burst of power, let alone make a freaking portal." Her emerald orbs glowed with rage as she straightened the wing fabric that covered up the majority of her torso, exposing her stomach that had been tanned a darker shade of her skin with crimson dirt. "You're really thinking imaginatively, aren't you?"

I shrugged and leaned back, the fire that glowed in front of us warming me up. "Just need to keep hoping, Gwen. We can't lose that tiny bit of hope." I watched her slowly calming expression with a careful eye. "It's all we got left 'round here."

She just sighed and ran her fingers through her long red hair. It had crested down around her waistline, using one of the crystals from my arm to chop off only the ends. She kept on telling me that it looked better longer because it gave her the chance to braid it. And that kept her fiery mane out of the way in battles. Or at least, that was what she told me. Whatever the reason, I liked it.

"Alright, alright," she said, giving in before cracking a bone in her hands and tossing a chunk of the meaty leg across the blaze to me. "I won't dampen the mood." A soft smile was shot my way.

I tore into the food, not bothering to return the gesture. It always came across as a grimace or a glare anyways. My monstrous body held me back from anything even relatively human. I leaned back, my limbs relaxing. "So any plans on where to go from here?" I asked.

Gwen had taken on the role of our planner, the one who schemed like Hell to get things done, to find a route out of here. And I let her. Because she seemed to enjoy it. And thinking somewhat hurt me. So I let her do everything. No questions were asked; things were just done with her around. The responsibility was pulled off my shoulders. She was just great to have as a partner in crime.

"From here," she began, tearing into her own charred hunk of dinner, "we start using the farmers on the far side of the crater to get to some equipment that we can call the Plumbers with. And once we have them-"

"We're homeward bound," I finished for her.

She nodded, emerald green orbs brilliantly sparkling with that evil twinkle that they had recently taken on. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

"We should probably get some rest," said Gwen, her fingers toying with the few stray strands of hair that hung across her vision. "Long day ahe-"

A roar escaped me as a throbbing pain raged in my skull, bringing waves of pain rippling through my skin and sending agonizing fire through my veins. It thundered through me like I was nothing at all.

"Kevin!" Her voice was hardly a squeak when I heard it, the blood racing through my brain drowning out all other sounds as I moved from sitting on the log into a kneeling position, ready to keel over at any second and lose myself to the torrents of agony that threatened to drown me. Her hands were placed on my skin.

At her touch, I moved away, pulling away the best I could; if she was too close, she could've gotten hurt. Or worse. I wanted to swallow the words down as I thought them. And another howl erupted from my throat as pain flooded my senses, driving everything else from my mind except for my need to get rid of this body, to shed the skin that was holding me back from any true potential. I writhed, slowly moving over to my bed of wings to try and get out of the way so Gwen could never be hurt by my wrath.

"Kevin," she gasped, reeling away from me as I roared again. I opened one eye to see her pressed against the wall, watching me with horrified eyes, a hint of excitement and wonder residing behind the panic and worry. "Ke-"

I let out another long, low, loud cry that made the entire cave shake. I had- had to shake- leave this-this wretched body-

And the darkness consumed me, the predator turned prey.

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**A/N: I couldn't leave it all in one perspective, now could I? Review if you know what's coming!**

**~Sky**


	8. Humanity

**A/N: Ironically enough, in the show, Kevin just mutated. Here, he's getting better. Great…**

**Disclaimer: I own no part of Ben 10. This idea is owned by Crushed Hale.x.**

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He just kept writhing. Between roars of agony, there were light whimpers that I could hardly hear. Kevin just kept holding his head.

I wished I could do something, but I was too terrified to get any closer to him. I didn't want to become an accidental victim of whatever was happening to him. Whatever force was taking over his body, it was giving him Hell.

"Kevin," I breathed again, "listen, Kevin, follow my voice." His name was all I could say to keep him trained on me instead of on whatever pain was beating in his skull. "Come on, Kevin. Come back to me. It's fine. You'll be fine, Kevin."

Another loud, ripping snarl erupted from his throat and I pressed myself harder to the wall, fearing for my life. He was a violent beast. How was I supposed to know if he was going to kill me or not? All I knew was that he was a creature capable of killing me.

I kept my eyes glued to him, still whispering soothing words, sending out silent prayers that he could be alright. "Come on, Kevin, I'm right her-"

I was cut off by another growl. And slowly, the red faded from his skin, turning him as pale as the desert sands. The muscle and bulk from his skin seemed to drop from him, returning him to a human-like form as his extra arms were sucked back into his sides and his wings were pulled into his back. The tail was already gone before I had a chance to look at where it went. Long locks of ebony hung around his face as he stared at the ground, kneeling and still holding the sides of his skull. A groan escaped him and he collapsed, his thin pale body going limp and landing in the dust, a red cloud swelling in the space.

My jaw had gone slack. His body was small now, so fragile. He was weak, vulnerable. He just lay there, broken without the body that had kept him alive for so long in this place of torture. It took me a few minutes to realize what had happened to him.

He was human.

"Kevin," I murmured, dropping to his side and desperately holding his shoulders, wishing for any signs of life from him. "Kev, come on." I shook him gently, unsure how vulnerable he was now. "It's Gwen." I ran my fingers along his cheek, feeling real flesh there instead of the rough, crimson-colored skin that had once possessed his features. "I'm here."

With a few blinks, deep brown, nearly black eyes were staring up at me. His hair was hanging faintly in his eyes and he was silently taking it all in. A smile lit up his face; a real one that held no traces of a malicious sneer in it. "Human," he breathed, reaching one hand up to touch my cheek. His eyes lit up even more as he realized I was holding him.

A blush spread across my cheeks and I carefully helped him up. That was when I got a good look at him.

When we had first seen him on the streets of New York, he had been a scrawny little kid in black, hardly anything more than skin clinging to bones. Now he was well muscled and lean, towering over me by a good seven inches or so. His shirt had been ripped to shreds, but the tattered and holey jeans remained intact. His hair was as long as ever and those eyes... They had grown darker, but that made them even more gorgeous.

Why was I even thinking that?

"This is amazing," he said, a small breath escaping him, sounding a bit like a choked laugh. "Everything looks so much bigger now..." He spun and gave the place a good look, examining what he had done in that previous body. "I did a good job 'round here, didn't I?"

I smiled and nodded, still distracted by his beautiful dark eyes.

"Come on, let's get a fire started." He moved to grab some wood, now staring at it as a challenge. He grabbed the end of one of the massive logs and pulled upward, finding that he couldn't lift it as I watched him work on it for a few seconds. "Gwen?"

"Yeah?" I asked, zapping myself back into reality as I noticed he was talking to me.

His eyes were glazed over with slight worry. "I think things are going to be harder now..."

I blinked, horror seizing my heart, turning it to ice as it sank to my stomach. My throat was constricted with fear. He had been our strength, our powerhouse. Now he was about as useful as I was. "I think you're right..."

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**A/N: Ah, the glory of humanity. They're about thirteen now, right? …hormones anyone? Review it or die!**

**~Sky**


	9. Empowerment

**A/N: This is really killing me. For now, subtle Gwevin. Later, real plot. It's taking longer than I had hoped to get to the main point of this. So sorry, Crushed Hale.x! I just like them in the Null Void and all. You've gotten me addicted to this story! Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: Characters- MOA. Plot- Crushed Hale.x. Writing- moi.**

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So going outside got a lot harder. I didn't know how Gwen did it. It was all blindingly bright. And it hurt my eyes. Gwen walked out like she did everyday. "Okay," I said, wincing away from the world of red, "this is hard."

"And you lectured me on how to live here," she snorted with a wry smile. She looked up at me as she walked right on by. "Don't worry. You'll get used to it pretty fast." Gwen's flaming red hair fluttered behind her as she kept walking. I quietly struggled to catch up, not wanting to show any weakness to her.

"We'll probably run info something," I reminded her. "Think that you could-"

"Don't start bringing up that stupid power thing again," she said, words huffed and irritated. This topic had come up a ton of times and I could tell she was just getting sick of it now. "Come on, Kevin, it's over, it's not going to happen. What happened that once won't happen again, got that?"

I rolled my eyes, walking up alongside of her. She was ridiculously hot. She could've passed as a supermodel if she put some work into it. Her hair was long and the vibrant shade of red just kept getting more scarlet every day. Her emerald eyes dragged me in and made me want to stare into them forever.

Yes, Gwen was beautiful. And I really, really wanted her. So badly I could taste it.

"Watch out!"

I dropped to the ground at Gwen's warning. I watched as a Necrofriggin swooped overhead with dark blue wings spread wide. A screech erupted from it.

Gwen was lying beside her, her face turned to look at me. "Now what do we do?" she hissed under her breath furiously. "You're useless and I'm useless so we're a team of freaking useless!"

"Ha," I said, running one hand through my hair. I still hadn't gotten used to how long it was. And how real it felt. To be human. "Yeah, I got nothin'." I shot her a sheepish smile and she groaned.

The Necrofriggin swept over our heads once more. Gwen rolled out of the way of it's hooked toes and closer to me. She was staring up at the sky and her side was pressed to mine. We were close enough to feel each other's warmth. I liked it. He emerald orbs glistened lightly with faint fear that she kept out of her features, but those eyes were the portals to her soul. We were in some serious shizz now and we both knew it. "Kev..."

"Tryin'." I got up and watched it circling, waiting for one of us to make a move. I dug my bare feet into the red stone and dust that were warm beneath my toes. I could only pray that the mutation didn't affect my other powers. The beast caught sight of me and began a low dive like an eagle through the crimson sky.

I let out a vicious war cry and let the red stone cover my body with the familiar feel of energy surging through my veins. The talons of the blue creature were within my reach and I snatched it out of the sky, ripping it from the air and pulling it to the ground. My muscles tore as I slammed it into the hard red earth. I hadn't used the human ones in a long time. It thrashed for a long time before an explosion of blue came out of nowhere, blasting it from my hands and out of the way. It lay motionless a few yards away.

As the remnants of the blue power vanished, I looked to where it had come from.

Gwen stood there staring at her hands.

I just opened my mouth and-

"Don't. Say. A single. Word." A biting edge clung to her voice and I just grinned to myself. I had been right all along. She had powers. At this point, it was too hard to tell what race she was, but there was something in her. Something good, too.

"Grab it and let's go." She moved towards it as my armor melted away. We both tracked our way over to the lifeless body of the Necrofriggin and began to maneuver it back to our camp in silence. When we got it down into the hole, she sat across the room and I sat on my usual log. The body lay off to one side.

"So you were right," she breathed after a long moment of absolute quiet. "Now what? You care to explain how I did that, Mr. Smart-Ass?"

I smirked and she stuck her tongue out at me like we were a couple of seven-year-olds on a playground. "Well, what were you thinkin' about when you did that?" I asked, leaning forwards and putting my elbows on my knees to hear this. I had been right so I deserved to hear what I was right about in the first place.

"Protecting you." Her eyes glittered with panic for a moment before it subsided in her emerald orbs. "I just imagined wrenching the life from it-" One finger pointed to the creature that had been alive only an hour or so ago. "-and _that_ happened."

I took this in, staring at the empty ring of stones that lay between us. We didn't make eye contact and we didn't even acknowledge each other for a while. I was taking in all this information.

At last, she rose and began to build the basis of our daily fire. I let her work while I ran through the database of all alien life forms in my head, trying to find the one that matched Gwen's powers. I finally came to my weak conclusion. I wasn't even sure of myself, but it was the best I had. "Anodite."

She froze and gave me a long hard stare that seemed to be piercing my soul. "What?"

"You're an Anodite. Powers come from other life forms. Energy is called mana." I watched her react to all this that I was throwing out there at her. "You dish it out but only as it comes. Powers are weaker here obviously 'cause of the lack of-"

"Life and energy." Her eyes sparkled as she realized that we were actually getting somewhere with all this. "What else?"

I remembered as much as I could and recited it to her from memory, but there wasn't much. "Basically, you're made of the stuff. You need it to fuel your powers. More life forms nearby, more power. It's a simple concept, really." It occurred to me that my nerd level was probably off the charts at that point. "The gist of it is that your powers won't work too well here."

She nodded, sitting back down across from me. "Gotcha."

Another stony silence resumed. I eventually got a fire started and began cooking the meat off of our freshest catch. And she asked me, "Do you think I could make a portal out of the Null Void and back to Earth?"

I gave her a soft, half-hearted smile. "Let's hope."

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**A/N: Ready for this? Ready? Uh-huh. No hormones here. But there are little things that you could notice. Next chapter will be up when I get more reviews. Bring it on.**

**~Sky**


	10. Fuel for the Fire

**A/N: I'm so proud of myself for getting this down. This is easily my most popular full-length story ever. I really hope you guys are enjoying it as much as I am. So here's another one in Gwen's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing at all. Plot is by Crushed Hale.x and characters are by MOA.**

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Kevin had been drilling me. He told me that this was how his dad taught him to use his powers so well, how he learned so fast. Constant focus and nothing else. And so far, we weren't getting anywhere. We had been working for nearly two days straight with only a few minutes for food and an hour or two for rest each day. And when I said drill, I meant it literally.

"Come on," he hissed through gritted teeth, clearly growing evermore impatient by the second. "You've got this, Gwen. Just take a deep breath and-"

"SHUT UP!" I raged at him. My hands clenched to fists and I gave him a glare in the form of daggers, mercilessly furious with him. "JUST SHUT UP ALREADY!"

He cowered back for a second, fear taking over his features for a few rare seconds before his eyes glimmered with that devilish sparkle I had grown too accustomed to. Kevin gave me a hard stare. "If you want out, you gotta work with me, got that?"

"If you want out, you're gonna need me, got that?"

Between us, a silent battle was raging. I was furious, he was happy, I wanted him so badly I could taste it, he was staring at me when he thought I wasn't looking, and we were growing up in a bloody prison with a crimson sky and a world of stone. This was the ultimate Hell.

His eyes seemed to soften for a moment before his thoughts recollected themselves and he was right back on top of me, intent on unlocking my powers. "Come on, I know you can do it."

"So do I, but why do we need to push it?" I was snarling at him by that point, fury boiling in my blood, simmering to dangerous levels. "We'll get out. We'll be free eventually." My eyes glittered with anger. "So shut it, would you, Levin?"

He actually seemed stung. And he sat back. He locked his fingers behind his head, bare chest revealing his clear eight-pack of pure muscle that he had accumulated as he stretched himself out. It was hard to even remember the monster he used to be now. He was just so simple and so sweet now... Was this even the same guy?

"Kevin," I started, wanting to take the words back, but he cut me off before I could go any further.

"I have to be missing something." His obsidian eyes were shut, hidden from me so I couldn't read his emotions or anything. As long as I couldn't see his eyes, I wouldn't know what he was thinking. "Your powers need fuel... Mana... Something's missing..." His face twisted up for a second like he was in pain before relaxing again. Then he shifted, standing up to pace.

This bugged the shit outta him, not knowing what to do. Neither of us were exactly the dominant one in our relationship built off of survival, but Kevin definitely held the upper hand with knowledge. He knew what he was talking about when he did talk. And when he was really -blocked-ed with himself, he would pace to beat Hell. There were literally ruts in the floor where he had walked back and forth for hours on end.

And if anything bugged the shit outta me, it was that.

"Stop," I said, falling back down to sit across from him, chin in my hand. "Whenever you do that, it really irritates me." I flipped my hair from my eyes. It was turning the color of fall leaves from dirt and grime and muck that I kept getting myself into. And it was long. The very end of it was already long past my waist and halfway down my thighs.

"How'd you do it the last time?" he asked, mostly to himself. Then his gaze flickered to me. "Some kind of emotional trigger maybe?"

I let my gaze stray to the fire as I shrugged. "I just wanted it dead. Not sure how wanting something dead could make a portal though."

His deep black eyes found me, those two endless abysses begging. He wanted out more than the world. He wanted out even more than I did. And I wanted to help him, but I was getting so sick and tired of all this that I just wanted to scream-

Before either of us really knew what was going on, I was working my way around the fire to him and he was walking around the stones to get to me. And suddenly I was in his arms, those warm arms that I had wanted around me for so long now. I found his embrace even more comforting than I had ever imagined. He was so warm, just so warm...

Kevin's fingers stroked my hair, running through the dirt and grime. And I looked up into his pleading eyes only to have his lips find mine, both of us desperate for some sort of comfort some sort of love, anything that would make us feel human, together, alive, anything.

His body was against mine and we were hot and heavy in a matter of moments, fourteen and already getting my first kiss turned make-out session with the guy who had once tried to kill me. And his fingers, so soft, ran across my skin, feeling like the kisses of a butterfly.

The boy was magic. He knew exactly how to get to me. As his hungry lips moved down my neck, I felt myself moaning, not even knowing what I was doing or what I wanted. I was driven by instinct, just knowing that this was Kevin and he was here and this was all so real, my fantasies finally come true. His hands kept wandering up and down my sides before finally settling on my back as if he knew what he was doing.

Once more, his mouth mashed against mine violently. We needed this. All this tension, all this madness, all this pain, all this pressure. It was finally getting released. I was finally able to relax in his arms and feel his warm embrace as he took me in.

And I was ready to love Kevin. I had been ready since he saved me. I had fallen for him so hard, so fast. I wished I could've known him sooner.

Eventually, we found ourselves toppling onto the pile of old Necrofriggin wings that we used as beds, his body lingering on top of mine as we kissed so passionately that I could feel sparks bouncing between us like little flashes of lighting in our lips and in our hearts.

After what had to be an hour but felt like only moments, he laid beside me instead of crushing my smaller body with his muscular one. And his eyes flashed with faint emotions that I couldn't come to recognize. Love, maybe?

Because I definitely loved him whether he knew it or not.

And the first thing either of us were capable of saying was "Wow."

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**A/N: I feel that was a chapter well done. Hormones, much? I hope you loved reading it as much as I loved writing it! And keep reviewing to see more!**

**~Sky**


	11. Opened Portals

**A/N: Here you go. Quickly before I lose internet.**

**Dis: don't own.**

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Kevin's theory was that I was driven by adrenaline. So we were trying some insane stuff ranging from cliff-diving into rocks with him to catch me to fighting off monsters about three times Kevin's size.

And Kevin was big. He was still pulling the weight around and towered over me by a whole head. Plus his arms were practically bulging with muscles by now. His abs were a rock-solid eight-pack. Kevin had those broad shoulders and that square jaw line and the sparkling black eyes. So he had gone from a relatively scrawny guy to Mr. Big Bulging Muscles. In a couple of months.

And in the same couple of months, I had really, really fallen for him. Really.

The first time we kissed, it had been magic. It had made my heart thunder in my chest and made my blood race through my veins. That was the first thing I felt of humanity in a long time. It was the first thing I had felt that made me seem normal again in years. We hadn't gone much past that. Occassionally, there were long moments when Kevin and I got caught up in each other and fell on the ground, our minds consumed with thoughts of each other, our lips meshed together so tightly that we couldn't breathe.

And he was amazing like that. He was good. So perfectly good. The way he held me, the way he watched over me, the way he just relaxed under stress. Kevin was incredible. Always so incredible. So amazingly incredible.

So as I dove right off a cliff, adrenaline surging through my limbs, my body dropping to the ground at exhilarating speeds, I closed my eyes. I had nothing to worry about. I knew exactly who was going to catch me.

He managed to grab me, letting out a little gasp as I fell into his warm, muscular arms. "Okay, this is getting harder," he said, putting me down gently so that my feet touched the ground. "Gwen, you're getting really heavy."

"Good to know I can catch up to you, Mr. Macho." I smiled his way and he stretched his arms above his head, limbs sore from grabbing me out of the air so suddenly. "I'm not a little girl anymore." And I managed to straighten out the wings we had welded together to create clothing for ourselves. I was in a short skirt and a cropped top that revealed enough of my flat, toned stomach to make him crazy sometimes. He was in something similar to shorts. Or at least that was what they were supposed to be.

"Just because I'm stronger than you doesn't mean much, gorgeous." He gave me a lopsided grin.

I quietly shivered, looking into the crimson sky of the Null Void. "This is getting ridiculous now, Kevin." I put my arms around myself just for comfort. "I'm cliff-diving in hopes of a portal. Does that sound crazy to you?"

"I dunno," he laughed weakly. "You're talkin' to an Osmosian who got thrown into the Null Void by your weak cousin. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of crazy even is anymore." He sounded confident enough to me. "You're weird, I'm weird, and we're both aliens. Crazy probably defines our whole lives, Gwen."

I just shrugged quietly and moved on, looking at the world like it was any other day. Or any other day in the Null Void, at least.

"Come on," Kevin breathed, moving just a bit closer to me. His arm snaked it's way around my thin waist. I quivered at his warm touch. "Let's get back."

Uncontrollably, I leaned into him, my body fitting perfectly into his like we were meant for each other. His hair lingered in my face for a long moment. Then I looked up to him-

-our lips found each others within a matter of moments. We were just natural together. My fingers tangled their way up into his ebony hair, his arms pulling me closer to him until there was no space left for air. His fingers were working their way at my waist, fingering the hem of my skirt. I didn't care. I wanted him. I wanted him so badly I could taste it.

He bit at my lower lip and I responded by nipping him right back. My eyes were sealed shut, blocking out the Null Void and just focusing on him, him, him, oh...

He was quietly working me, lips sliding down my neck and quietly nibbling at my skin. Kevin was careful with me, like I was a doll that could be broken with the slightest movements. He was still working at my skirt, wondering whether to rip it or to be gentle.

My body was ready for him and I moaned with pure ecstasy. He loved me and I loved him. That was all that mattered. That was all that could ever matter.

And suddenly, he was leaning away. "Gwen?"

I blinked open my eyes to find a raging wall of pink lingering in front of us, twisting and swirling like a vortex. It was fast and wide open, ready for anything to come through.

A portal.

As soon as my attention was back on the fact that this was our way out, it was closing. The pink around the edges was dying away and it was shrinking, disappearing, vanishing, soon to be gone-

Kevin's arms tightened around my waist and before I knew what was happening, I was plunging through the vortex in his arms, hoping for the best. Whatever was on the other side could either be better or worse than the Null Void. But whatever was going to happen, Kevin was going to be there with me.

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**A/N: review**

**~Sky**


	12. Finally Free

**A/N: Okay, I'm a little stuck on this one. This chapter may be… Sketchy? I don't know how to explain the writer's block I'm getting on this story. But I'll do the best I can. Gwen's POV**

**Disclaimer: Idea is by Crushed Hale.x, characters by MOA, story by Skylark Evanson**

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"How did that work?" I asked, still clinging onto him nearly half an hour after we hit the ground. We had been too scared to move for the longest time. We didn't want to be trapped in another dimension. We wanted to be home. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be able to take Kevin home with me and show him my house and let him meet my parents and just let life go on like nothing had happened. We didn't move because we were too afraid. Kevin clung to me and I clung to him. Neither of us were brave enough to let go of the other yet.

"I don't know," he whispered as if just finding his voice. His face was buried in my hair. "I just don't want to look up and see that we're in a pocket dimension or somethin'."

"One of us has to check, Kev. We can't lay like this for the rest of our lives." I was on top of him and his eyes weren't open and I wasn't looking around for a number of reasons. "I mean, I wouldn't mind it, but this is getting a bit ridiculous."

"I definitely wouldn't mind this." He pulled his face away from my hair and leaned his head back against the ground, facial features relaxed as he drank in the warm air. His chest rose and fell, taking me with it. He had no shirt on and I liked that. I really liked that. "But whatever you say."

His gorgeous black eyes opened and sunshine reflected brightly in them the same way the fire had made those obsidian orbs glint back when we had been hiding back in the cave beneath the ground of the Null Void.

"Freedom," I breathed.

"Freedom," he whispered right back.

Then his eyes met mine for a long moment. Then our lips met. One thing was on our minds:

Freedom.

His hands roamed over my exposed skin and I drank in his scent. One thing kept crossing my mind:

Freedom.

My head whirled as he deepened our kiss, his tongue dancing with mine.

Freedom.

I let my fingers run over the valleys of his torso that made up his eight-pack of abs.

Freedom.

Kevin pulled me to him harder, tears from his deep brown eyes touching my face as he whispered one thing over and over again with each breath he was able to take before our mouths mashed together once more.

"Freedom."

I just told him the same thing right back, my lungs hardly getting any air.

"Freedom."

Our bodies pressed tighter together. I could feel the beat of his heart drumming in his chest. The adrenaline surged through our systems. All it knew was one thing.

Freedom.

Four years in Hell. After four years in Hell, I finally had it. I could finally grasp what was hanging just out of my reach that whole time.

Freedom.

The thought kept zinging through my mind. My skull reverberated with it as Kevin kept hanging onto me like I was his whole life. He clung to me and all I knew was one thing.

Freedom.

"Gwen," he murmured, fingers tangling up into my hair. His body was warm and hot against the grass that caressed his soft, supple skin. I kept holding onto him. "Gwen," he whispered again. And his lips finally pulled away from mine so that we could both drink in the sweet air that blustered around us. "Gwen." He still didn't let go of me and I loved that about him. We weren't going to fall apart yet. "Gwen." Tears were streaming down his face and I didn't even know it, but they were cascading down my cheeks as well. Four years later, we were free. We were out. We were able to run. "Gwen." His eyes fluttered shut as he pressed my head into his broad chest, just wanting to know I wasn't going to escape his grasp. "Gwen."

This was our freedom. Because we were finally free.

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**A/N: Despite the block, I like how it turned out. Next chapter is the one I'm going to like. Thanks for reading! Now it's time for y'all to click that adorable little review button down there! CLICK IT!**

**~Sky**


	13. Miles and Miles From Where You Are

**A/N: I have a ton of stuff written and half written. Anyways, here's what I've got on the lastest episodes: next premiere- February 4****th****. Episode title- "The Transmogrification of Eunice". Another character that isn't usually on the show- ELENA VALIDUS! Yeah, it's just a rumor, but I'm pretty sure she'll show up in this one. We've waited long enough to see her…**

**Disclaimer: idea for this is by Crushed Hale.x and I do not own the characters. Gwen's POV.**

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"Okay, good to know we got dropped off in the middle of frickin' nowhere," I huffed, tugging a few dirty, muddy strands of my flame colored hair away from my tired eyes. The sand kicked up in my face, and I immediately regretted being so dirty to begin with. Just the dust and grime around us on the outskirts of a desert was enough to make me mad. Being dirty was just so irritating after so long. Four years and I felt like I deserved a shower. I was free and I still hadn't been able to even clean the basic grime off my skin. It was annoying.

"Relax," breathed Kevin as he carried me on his shoulders through the sweltering heat. The sun's blinding rays were raining down on us like buckets of moisture being thrown from the sky by demons. Honestly, I would've been grateful for rain. It sounded good. And it probably would've cleaned me off to a decent extent. "You need to calm down. I'll get us some place safe, grab us some chow, and we'll sit down and plan things out. Capiche?" He held one balled up hand into the air as if asking "Do you trust me?"

I bumped my fist against his and shifted myself so I could kiss his gorgeous ebony hair, trying to focus somewhere between what I could see ahead of us and keeping my balance. "Capiche."

"Now, how far out do we look?" he asked, unable to keep the slight doglike pant out of his voice. Kevin had been carrying me on his shoulders for at least two miles. Maybe more. Between the heat and the general exhaustion of just everything in our worlds crashing in on us, I didn't blame him for being totally wiped out. I'd noticed he'd been struggling for the last nine hundred yards give or take, but he wouldn't put me down until we were safe on solid ground instead of in this barren, sandy wasteland.

"Looks like another two miles," I breathed after getting dust in my throat. I coughed a bit, trying to recover from the dirt going down my windpipe. As if my body wasn't bad enough already, the conditions here made it worse. But at least we were back on Earth. "It kind of looks like the Vegas strip..." Lights shimmered in the distance despite it being about four in the afternoon. The sun had passed its peak, and I knew we both had to be eternally grateful for that.

Kevin snorted a weak laugh and managed a smile. "That's just great. First place we get to is Vegas."

"And you would've preferred New York?"

"New York is safer than Vegas, sweetheart," he snickered, using one hand to brush his messy hair from blocking his vision. "Vegas is a dangerous place. Its crime rate is much, much higher than the rates in the Big Apple." A soft smile touched his features before vanishing like a ghost. "And besides, it'll be harder to get anywhere from here. I know New York better. That, and this place is surrounded by desert and we have no cash for any other kind of transportation."

"Well, we'll get to the city and worry about things from there, alright?" I leaned forward so that my long braid of hair fell over one of my shoulders and almost sort of whapped him right in the face. It narrowly missed.

He huffed with the effort of walking after another half hour or so. I could feel him slowing down and we were still about a mile and a half out of the city limits. Having me up on his shoulders wasn't doing him any good and we both knew that. The pack is only as fast as it's slowest member. And Kevin was slowing down enough to slow down the whole pack. Especially since there were only two of us.

"Lemme down," I said, trying to haul myself off of his well-muscled body without falling on my butt or doing a face plant into the dry, dusty sand. "I can walk it from here, Kev."

"We're almost there," he said, eyes not even shifting in the slightest to look up at me. His muscles tightened and he put on a brave face, trying not to show how tired he really was. "We can make it. I'll be fine." He had one hand on my knee to keep me balanced and he gave it a little squeeze out of love. I couldn't help the smile that curled up the corners of my mouth. "I promise, if you get too heavy, I'll let you down."

Once more, I pressed my lips into his messy ebony locks and a faint smile kissed his face the same way the sun caressed our skin. It beat down on us with the most intense heat we could ever imagine. It made the Null Void's crimson sky almost welcoming compared to this intense blaze of sunlight. "Kevin?"

"Hmm?" he answered, planting another foot down into the sand to keep moving forward to the destination we had been working towards this whole time. We just needed to be back on solid ground.

"I love you."

"Love you too, beautiful."

And we trudged on. Or at least he did, me upon his shoulders like a princess being carried through the streets. The vast blue expanse above us sprawled out like the ocean. It was a welcoming sight.

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**A/N: Shorter, I know, but I'm struggling with these in-between chapters. Anyways, review!**

**~Sky**


	14. Left Behind

**A/N: So I'm toasty and warm and cuddly and time to write something emotionally heartwrenching. Oh, and I'm watching "The Final Battle" and I was watching "Ben 10: Alien Swarm" earlier… So far, I'm not seeing anything Elena-esque on the previews of "The Transmogrification of Eunice" yet… Oh well, story time! Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10.**

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"What do we want to do?" I asked Gwen before hunkering down under the little bit of shelter we had found beneath the lids of trash cans. Vegas was harder to pickpocket and people were just cruel to kids tryin' to make a living. "We can't make it here for very long. It's dangerous for you and I'm not exactly fond of leavin' ya alone somewhere for a few hours while I stake out a place for cash."

"Taking me with is always a choice," she reminded me, curling into my body to share the warmth of my blood pulsing through my skin. The nights in the city surrounded with desert easily dropped to forty degrees at night and that was dangerous for me and Gwen, being wrapped in a wing or two each. She had one wrapped around her waist as a tight skimpy skirt and another around her chest. I had two patched together to function as shorts. Yeah, they were warm, but they weren't meant for these kinds of temperatures, especially not the way we were wearing them.

"I do better on my own," I told her quietly, pulling her tightly to my chest in a protective way. I was freezing and I could only imagine how cold she was. "I've always flown solo except for when that moronic cousin of yours stepped into my life and turned me into that... monster." I couldn't keep the hatred from my voice.

That kid would pay for what he did to me. He would pay dearly. He was the only monster I could think of. He was vicious and cruel, not giving me a second look when he tossed me into Hell. Ben Tennyson was going to be a dead man if he weren't dead already. He deserved to die for what he did to me.

And for what he did to his cousin. She was with me for four years. Four years. Four years of her life were wasted in a world of bloodshed and tears and pain and misery and suffering. Not once did he come try to find her. Not once did we hear anything about someone searching for a little red-haired girl. Ben never searched for her.

I wasn't sure what I was angrier about, the ay he dumped me into the Null Void like a piece of or the way he just left his cousin to die without ever going after her.

"You're better now," Gwen assured me, voice soft and gentle. She was too sweet. I had never been shown the sort of kindness only she could give. "Don't worry about it." Her head found it's way into the crook of my neck and I couldn't help the little sigh that escaped me. I still remembered the scared little girl that had fallen into the Null Void on accident; now, she was the love of my life.

"Alright, whatever," I sighed, trying to keep from shivering in the cold.

"So do you have a plan?" she asked, emerald eyes staring up into my face with that hopeful green gaze of hers. "I mean, I don't know what you want to do or anything, but I was thinking..."

Something tugged on my heart. The way her voice sort of dropped off made me pause and listen to her a little harder. I guess being with her for so long had set me off to know every little thing about her. "You want me to take you home, don't you?"

Her gaze strayed away from me but it didn't keep her from being so snuggled into my chest. "Kevin, I can't... Home is where I belong. I would love to stay with you forever, b-"

"But you have bigger places to be, better things to do." I turned my gaze to face the trash cans that were lined up on my right, Gwen curled into my chest to the left of me. "Don't worry, I'll move on. I've done it hundreds of times before."

Mad? Me? No. Upset beyond belief? Easily. I was used to being left behind and kicked out and neglected, but it was harder when Gwen had been with me for so long and since I was so emotionally attached to her on every level. She was what really made me think about what I wanted to do when I finally got out. And I had made my decision. I had wanted to stay with her. But now, it was ruined. She was leaving me behind. And where did I have to go?

"Kevin, I don't even know if they'll still be there," she said, taking my face in her hand and turning it so I had to look at her. "And I can't do anything without you. I can't get anywhere without you to take me there."

"So now I'm your tool?" I asked her, trying to keep the words from rolling off my tongue like poison.

Her face twisted in a mix of anger and regret. "Kev, come on. You can stay with Ben. My aunt and unc-"

I recoiled like I had been struck. "Are you serious?" I snarled. "Stay with the one who trapped us in there?" I pushed away from her, moving so I could stand up and be free. The idea of being trapped in a home with the one who had made my life miserable was the worst thing she ever could've suggested. I began to pace the alley, panic in my mind. If I had to go anywhere near him again… I wasn't sure I would be able to control myself from wanting to kill him. "Gwen, have you even considered the possibility that he did that to you on purpose like he did to me? Did he even look for you? Did he even take care of you? No, I did all that stuff. It was me. Not Ben. That…. that… He didn't do anything for you, got that?"

Gwen stared at me with a soft, but hurt expression. "Kevin-"

"I don't want you goin' anywhere near him. He didn't do anythin' for either of us so why go back to him now?" I spat, trying not to totally lose it. My anger was boiling in my blood, making me furious. I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it for a while. "He took care of himself before, why would he need you back now?"

"Why would you need me now?" she snarled back at me. "You just said-"

I had to say it before she started saying things we would both regret. "I need you, Gwen. I love you. I don't want to go anywhere without you. Four years in Hell and I grew to love you. Got that? I'm not going there and they don't deserve you." I turned back to stare at her, now standing with that long scarlet braid laying across her back and neck. "They won't understand you either. No one understood me when I tried to tell them and I was considered a freak. They won't look at you the same as before."

"I have to go home," she insisted; faint tears glistened in those deep emerald orbs. I could sense the desperation coming off of her in waves. She really wanted to go home.

I turned away again, unable to keep my voice level while she stared at me with those hurt and broken eyes. "I'll take you home," I told her quietly, folding my arms across my chest, unsure on how we'd even be able to get back. We'd be going half way across the country. "But I'm not gonna stay and I'm not gonna promise you that I won't feel the urge to kill that stupid cousin of yours."

A small smile touched her lips. "You should really look at things differently."

"He left you," I snarled. I couldn't help the tension that rose in my limbs, making me stiff with fury. "He left you to die."

"Kevin-"

"You should want to kill him the same way I do. Those are years you won't get back." I stared out of the open mouth of the alley as cars zipped past on the streets, sloshing up water from the broken fire hydrant a few blocks down that I had busted. "He ruined your life the same way he ruined mine. We should be out to kill him for doing this to us."

Gwen was silent for a long time after that. We ended up curled up again together for the night. It was a cold, quiet night.

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**A/N: Plotline approaches… Review it!**

**~Sky**


	15. Seeing His Fear

**A/N: Another chapter of this was in order.**

**Disclaimer: Idea by Crushed Hale.x. Characters by Man of Action. Written by Skylark Evanson.  
****Warning: This one is going to be rated… slightly higher. Just be forewarned. Definite T rating here, but it's not too horribly bad that I feel the need to change it to M.**

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The thing I was most scared of was the fact that he could possibly be right.

Did Ben look for me? I figure he would've. He's my cousin and all, so he should've. Family rules above all else, right? ...right?

It was a sleepless night for me. I was racked with these thoughts that haunted the darkest corners of my mind, making me search desperately for a distinction between the truth and lies.

The Vegas streets never stopped moving. The people were always roaming outside the mouth of the alley, drifting across the sidewalks like ghosts floating over water. Drunks stumbled past Kevin and I as my beloved slept, his head resting against mine. A few strands of his hair, black as night, tickled my cheek as his rhythmic breathing created a lulling tune for me to try and sleep to.

I hardly even closed my eyes for more than a second. Even then, it was just to blink.

Had Ben looked for me? Did he even remember me? How did he turn out? It had been four years since I saw him and beck then he had been a self-centered jerk about everything and anything. The hero side of him went to his head. It upset me that my own cousin was such a bastard half the time.

And if he hadn't looked for me... I would side with Kevin. Four years of my life had been wasted in Hell. I had lived beneath a demonically red sky that loomed over my every movement. A monster had been my companion for a time until he was finally healed of all his pain and suffering. And I had nearly died multiple times. The pale scar that remained slashed up my forearm was proof of that. And I had many more scars to show for what happened with Kevin and I in the Null Void.

I knew enough to know that I probably would've heard something if Ben had been looking for me. Or at least he would've come back through the projector's portal to at least search for me. And he didn't. I didn't hear anything about anyone searching for me. Kevin did have a point.

I quietly stroked his locks of ebony while he slept, trying to figure out why he was so keen on keeping me all to himself. Maybe it was because he'd been alone for too long. Or because he'd been hurt worse as a child than I knew. He was Kevin. I'd practically grown up with him. He was the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. We had never once fought in all the time we'd been in love. It was so perfect, so way we adored each other. This was our first real fight, and it felt more like we were a married couple instead of a couple of young teenagers.

What if Kevin was right? What if I was unwanted?

My only choice in that scenario was probably to stay with him. Kevin was open to the idea of taking me back to New York and showing me the ropes. I could read that much in his deep obsidian eyes whenever he looked at me. He was willing to keep me forever, no questions asked.

But another thing I had read in his eyes scared me. The second I said Ben's name, I felt him go hostile. I noticed when every muscle in his body tensed to it's maximum limit. I could see the veins in his neck pulsing blood faster through his system. I just knew Kevin. Maybe a little too well. Because I knew he probably wasn't going to be able to hold back when he saw Ben again. Ben may have been my cousin, but Kevin's rage was enough to kill him a thousand times and still not be satisfied.

That's why I was worried. Kevin was ready to kill on the turn of a dime. And part of me was siding with him.

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Kevin was awake before I was the next morning. I must've dozed off eventually because he offered an apple out to me the second my eyes were open. "Morning," he said, a smile on his lips; it was as if the discussion from the night before had never happened for him.

I took the apple and bit into it. It was the first thing of real food I'd had in four years. It really was the best thing I'd ever had. For once in my life, I was grateful for an apple. I felt so pathetic. "Where did you get this?" I asked, wondering if he'd left me or if he'd just found the food lying around in the alley or something.

"Same place I got these from," he answered, tossing me a small plastic bag full of something limp and heavy.

I stuck the apple in my mouth and held it there with my teeth while I peeled open the bag that he had tied up nice and tight. Clothes. I put it beside me and took the apple out of my mouth to say, "I love you."

Those orbs as black as a pair of endless abysses glittered down at me as he stretched a little bit, arms behind his head. "Yeah, I'm pretty awesome, right?" he asked rhetorically, a little laugh coming from him as he pulled another bag out from wherever he was storing all this stuff. "I got myself some too so we're not walking around and standing out in crowds."

I had to piece together the puzzle that he laid out before me. "You stole this stuff?" I asked, realizing that he had to hide in a crowd because someone had to be looking for him in the first place.

"We got no cash," he pointed out weakly, looking out into the mouth of the alley. I could read the smallest trace of fear in his night-colored eyes. "Just get changed so we can go. I got us bus tickets too so we can get you home faster." He began to pull off the wings he had used to function as shorts.

After practically devouring the apple right down to the core, I also began to strip out of my makeshift clothing, slipping out of the top that had contained my and slid on a bra and blue shirt that Kevin had grabbed me from wherever he had been shoplifting. Neither fit because they were too tight and I wondered if he did that by mistake or on purpose. I slid out of my skirt just as he was successfully getting some boxers on to cover up his manly parts. I then slid into a pair of panties and then a skimpy skirt that barely fit better than the shirt and bra did. "I'm ready," I told him, grabbing the flip-flops he had shoved towards the bottom of the bag and slipping them on.

"I'm almost done," he said, casting a glance at me before pulling a black shirt on over the gray one he was already wearing. "Like, two more seconds and then we're out of here."

I fixed my hair, pulling it out of the knotted braid it had been in and raking my fingers through it, trying to get the worst of the dust and grime out. "Okay," I said, looking him over to see how perfectly the tight fabric highlighted his finely toned muscles. "And your fly's down," I said, trying to stifle a giggle.

He looked down before looking back up at me with a signature grin. "Now how do you know I didn't do that on purpose?" he asked as if playing with me.

Yeah, it was a little weird that we were fine getting naked in front of each other, but it was only because we were so close. The cave back in the Null Void only had one space to function as a room and we were both growing up too fast to try and hide it. I was getting bigger up top, and he was changing. Puberty hit us hard and we just dealt with it. And the fact that we were in a relationship didn't help much either. We had come so close to going all the way more than enough times, but we knew the risks were too high if something went wrong. He was strong and I was fragile. And the way our DNA is... And if I had gotten pregnant... It would've been a nightmare. So Kevin and I just dealt with it. It was how we were. Things just became natural.

Two teenagers in love. What was there to do? We made out naked. We weren't afraid to do anything. The prison we had been trapped in for almost our entire lives had made us nearly immune to fear. Kevin and I weren't scared of anything physical except for losing each other.

"Alright, let's bounce," Kevin said, taking my hand and pulling me out onto the sidewalk. His eyes were shifty the second we hit the gray concrete. "We've got a lot of ground to cover."

I followed closely behind him for a while before proudly taking my position beside him, a soft smile spreading across my face as my long hair that was easily down to my knees flowed out behind me. I leaned a little closer to him so that our shoulders were brushing, and then his rough, calloused hand found mine. Those orbs of darkness found me and a loving smirk crept across his somewhat tanned features.

But for some reason, I could tell he was scared.

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**A/N: See why I wanted to post the warning? Anyways, this was just a little piece that I needed to get down so they're on the road. Things were hinted to, but nothing was actually done so I don't feel like I had to change the rating. So sorry if you think I had to. I post a warning whenever the ratings go up on just one chapter. Anyways, please review. Thank you for reading.**

**~Sky**


	16. A Sign

**A/N: Decided to get some stuff up really fast before I have to go finish up homework.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

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Kevin and I were getting pretty close to Bellwood after a few days of nearly constant traveling. We had tried hitchhiking part of the way and taking buses and then Kevin just flat out got bored, hotwired a car, and drove us until the thing ran out of gas. Which was a pretty nifty trick for a fifteen-year-old to execute so nicely.

There were nights when we just curled up in the darkness, my head in the crook of his neck, and slept for a few hours in turns to keep watch. It was almost like a paranoia for us to be watching out for ourselves when we were so exposed like this in the real world.

Neither of us had been on Earth in four years. Four years. Needless to say, we felt hideously vulnerable in such a foreign environment. My skin kept on burning when we walked in the sun and Kevin kept getting spit on for whatever reason. It was like some random guy would be walking down the street and he'd just spit on him. Which leads us to think "What the hell?" Yeah, the world changed pretty fast in four short years...

The hardest part about the journey was the awkward tension between us the whole time. When a night came along where we just camped out in a dark place, it was calm and was kissed a lot and we were able to carry on a decent conversation, usually about our lives before the Null Void. But when we started moving, a cloud of silence lingered over us. Kevin never spoke and he was always tense and wary of anything and everything.

Something inside of me was screaming. I could finally see the light at the end of this long dark tunnel. I could feel hopeful for the first time in years. I could feel alive again like I had a pulse and a heart and some faint love for the family that I had been so distant with for so many years now. It was like waking up from a horribly long nightmare and now I was just waiting to see my mom's smiling face as she stroked my hair and calmed me down from the terror of living in such a miserable world for so damn long…

And part of me didn't want to go home. Part of me wanted to stay with Kevin as a stray forever. We had managed just fine for this long, and I was actually starting to enjoy the run for our lives and the chase for a little bit of hope. Going home would make life easier for me, but where would the thrill go? Kevin wouldn't take me cliff diving anymore and I wouldn't be able to have any real fun with my parents supervising…

That scenario was only if they took me back and if they recognized me and if everything went over smoothly…

The first sign I saw was massive. The thing was made of wood and the big letters were painted a pale beige against the dark cherry bark of the main sign. I grabbed Kevin's shoulder and quickly jerked him awake before pointing out the window of the bus that we had managed to sneak onto. The sign was coming closer and closer. Kevin went tense beside me.

"Welcome to Bellwood," I read, unable to keep the excitement from bursting out of me. Finally, a chance to go home. A chance to escape the absence of family that had plagued me ever since I had been dropped into the prison with the crimson sky. "Kevin, I'm finally home." I turned to look at him.

He was as pale as a ghost and his fists were clenched tightly enough to make his knuckles turn to the color of ivory. His dark eyes weren't on me, nor were they on the sign. They were on the ground in front of us. It was like he was blocking out the world around him, dark hair finally succumbing to gravity's magnetic force and sliding around his face to hide his dark features like an ebony curtain across a stage. Kevin's bulging muscles were tight with the pure strength that practically radiated off of them.

"Kevin?" I asked, hoping to get him to maybe relax just a tad. He was so tense... I was almost… afraid of him…

"I'm trying," he said, the clear strain in his voice. I could faintly see the tendons stretching in his neck. "I don't want to lose control here, Gwen. I know that I'm going to have to see that-" He suppressed a vile word that threatened to suddenly spring from his lips. He swore a lot usually, but he was trying to keep it to a minimum nowadays. "-cousin of yours and I don't want to want to kill him."

That last sentence kind of made me start thinking because I had to piece together the words properly so that it actually made sense. "Kevin, you're better than that," I murmured, leaning over and stroking his ebony locks out of his face. "You're not a monster."

He still didn't look at me. His fist was still tightly clenched and his face didn't look like he was about to relax anytime soon. I could read him like an open book. I had lived with him for four years in Hell. How could I think that he would be able to control the urge to kill the guy who sent him there?

Instead of speaking more, I just took his chin in my hand and began to gently turn his head towards me until we were lined up enough for me to get my lips upon his with a slight sweetness. I let him take dominance in the battle of our tongues and I let his hand run across my chest and I let his fingers dance along my waistline. I knew how to keep him calm in the same way that he knew how to turn me on. Not just my overwhelming hormones in general, but my powers as well.

Kevin leaned over me a little bit more until I was practically pinned to the bus window, his lips getting rougher and rougher against mine. His hand began toying with the neck of my shirt as if he were debating whether to pull it down or not.

When we parted for a moment of air, I put a gentle hand at the base of his throat, pushing him away slightly while my chest heaved to draw air into my lungs. "More later," I breathed, my eyes holding his gaze of eternal blackness. "Just try to behave, okay?"

He took the chance to steal one last pecking kiss from my lips, a new hope blazing across his features like a wildfire. Two words came from him. They were the only two I needed to hear from a guy like him. "I'll try."

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**A/N: Tried to make it long. Anyways, reviews make me super happy!**

**~Sky**


	17. Home

**A/N: So I'm not happy with anything last night except for Young Justice. Ben 10 was just… bad… I'm really upset with television now… Nothing is good anymore… Nothing. It's sad, really. Ah, and now what am I going to do? Nothing to look forward to…**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Gwen's POV.**

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As soon as we got into Bellwood, I was automatically checking on maps to see where everything was. I had lived there for years before the Null Void, but I just wanted to sharpen up my skills.

Everything was just as I had last seen it. It was peaceful and calm and I was just glad that I still had at least a vague idea of where I was going. I didn't want to be wandering around in my own hometown like a bumbling idiot. And I had to lead Kevin because he didn't know where he was going and he had to rely on me to get him somewhere safe from here. This had been my realm just like New York and the Null Void had been his.

"My house is this way," I said, taking his warm hand and pulling him along on the sidewalk. "My parents should still live there, I hope." I kept tugging him along, watching out for a familiar face or a family member that could've been wandering the streets. "They said they wouldn't move until I left the house for college."

"So they still have, what, four years before that happens?" Kevin responded, eyes watching out for anything that looked relatively dangerous in his world. He wasn't taking any chances in a place where he knew he could get killed at any moment.

I loved Kevin, but I wasn't sure if I could fight Ben off if he came around. And I definitely didn't know whose side I would take. Ben was right and Kevin was a criminal, but now he was sweet and innocent. He wasn't the same guy anymore. He was just fighting for a living. And I didn't want to fight Ben because we were bound by blood. He was my family. I wasn't about to betray family. It's a thing. Family means nobody gets left behind. I'm pretty sure I saw that in a movie once.

The streets were the same as they had been last I saw them. Cars were still parked out in driveways and houses still had ugly shutters. The roofs were as neat and precise as ever and the lawns had never become overgrown. "This place is the same as always," I remarked to my boyfriend as if he knew the difference too. He didn't, obviously. He'd probably never even seen a nice neighborhood like mine before.

He just gave me a little shrug and retracted his hand from mine, sticking it along with the other one in his pockets.

And I was worried about him. I knew he was tense and I could feel his self-control fading into dust right before my eyes. I had watched this guy beat down monster after monster in the Null Void, only caring when they had gotten a scrape on my arm or knocked me unconscious. But now it was something personal and he was completely losing it. On the inside, of course. He'd never let it show.

"You going to be okay?" I asked, already feeling out of place in my own home. I had picked up his words, his language, his slang. It was all so… strange. Especially when I knew I should've reverted back to that prim and primped little girl I was back before I had fallen into Hell.

Kevin's answer was curt. "Fine."

I was about to ask him what was really wrong, but I caught sight of my house in the distance. And I was bolting ahead without even thinking. I felt the wind surge through my hair, dragging the long red locks out from being stuck to my back and up to where they were flowing out behind me in the open air. My feet were thrumming against the cement sidewalk and I couldn't help but run a little bit faster, desperate to keep running and moving. I only wanted to get home. Home at last. Everything was in sight. I could've had it all. My suffering would've finally been over. Home.

Home.

Home at last.

Kevin's footsteps were close behind me and I was up on my front lawn in a matter of seconds, immediately checking inside the glass windows as I raced to the door. I couldn't see anything inside, the drawn curtains not letting me see anything. So I stopped on the stoop and looked over my shoulder just as Kevin was coming up beside me. "Do I look okay? Do I loo-"

"You're fine," he murmured, just brushing a few stray strands away from my face with a weak smile kissing his features. "You're beautiful, got that?" Kevin raked a few fingers through my hair to take away some of the frizz in the mess. "Much better down instead of braided."

I gently slugged his shoulder and scowled in his direction for a moment. "You are annoying sometimes."

He grinned nicely at me and continued to fix my hair like any good boyfriend would. "It's the cherry on top of the roguish charm sundae," he insisted before taking a step back to look at me. "And seriously, don't put your hair up again. I don't like it."

Again, I hit him. Because I could. And because he was annoying. And because I could and he was annoying. Kevin… So cute, but so obnoxious…

"Now get in there and do whatever you would do with parents," he said, again taking a step back towards the sidewalk and away from me. "I'll-"

"You're staying here and you're not going to leave, got it?" I grabbed the collar of his shirt and hauled him closer to me again. "I'm not going to lose you. Just because we're here and not in your home turf doesn't mean that you're allowed to wander off. I'm not letting go of you."

"I was just going to hide in a bush across th-"

"No." I held onto him and gingerly knocked on the door. "You're staying with me." I released him and fixed my hair one last time, hoping I didn't look like wolves had raised me. "I need you now."

Kevin sighed for a moment, eyes darkening slightly. "Alright." He reached over and took my hand, squeezing it tightly to show that he was there for me. Never had I ever felt more comfortable with him. "I'll stay. For you."

I smiled my best smile before returning my eyes to the door that was unlocking from within and the knob turned.

Home. Finally home.

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**A/N: Cliffy. So review!**

**~Sky**


	18. Family At Last

**A/N: Wanted to update this yesterday for a request (happy late birthday, Alice!), but never really got around to it due to an onslaught of homework and lack of planning time for this fic. I had two courses of action that I could take with this chapter, and I finally drew up a decent conclusion to what the hell I wanted to do here. Rest of the story is now officially planned out in my little doodle notebook. Anyways, let's get on with this chapter! Gwen's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

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She was standing there. My mom. My mother. She stood there with that same blank expression on her face that she almost always had. She looked older, crow's feet around her eyes and wrinkles where her dimples used to be; the emerald orbs that mirrored my own were dull and lifeless beneath thin eyelashes that weren't even darkened with mascara. My mom seemed old for the first time in my life.

Four years were not kind to her.

Her stare was empty as she looked at me, seeming more like a ghost than my own parent. She gave a forced smile before saying, "I'm sorry, we're not interested in any cookies," and trying to close the door on me and Kevin.

I shoved my foot in the way before it could completely close, keeping it slightly ajar even when she did try a little harder to slam it. My foot was slightly squished into the doorframe, but I didn't care. I put my hand to the painted red wood of the door. "Hold on, one moment," I said, trying to keep her from shutting me out.

I'd been gone for four years. Four years of my life I had been away from home and out in the cold. My only comfort had been a boy turned monster and then turned boy once more. He had been the only person I'd had to call a friend. Now I needed family. I craved the feel of family around me. I just wanted some family to act as a comfort. I needed someone to be able to lean into and cry against. Kevin was alright with that, but he wasn't what a mother and father could be. I wanted my parents so badly that if I didn't have some sort of reunion with them soon, I was probably going to die of loneliness. Family was something completely necessary in my world. I had to have it.

Reluctantly, my mother opened the door again, half of her hiding behind the large wooden board. "What do you want?" my mother asked with a bit of fear in her voice. She eyed me with a bit of caution, and then when her gaze flitted to Kevin who stood just a step or two behind me, I could see the panic clearly written in her features. She could only see us as punk kids that were coming to rob or torture her.

I gulped down the lump of fear in my throat and drank in a deep breath of the warm air that swelled around us. The end of spring was in full swing and Bellwood was clearly ready to jump right into summer, but it was still chilly enough to send shivers up my spine and get goosebumps to rise up on my pallid skin. "Do you recognize me?"

She opened the door slightly more, letting more light into the house behind her. I could see that the furniture hadn't moved since I had last been home. I could see that all the blinds were drawn tightly, shut to keep the insides of the structure entirely in the dark. My mom's eyes raked up and down my body, taking in my thin build and my scrawny little arms that had built with faintly feminine muscles during the time I had spent in purgatory. Her emerald orbs continued to trail up and down my body before looking at my face. She stared into my eyes and then looked at my hair as it fell down my back down around my knees, still the color of a roaring fire. Her eyes looked over my face, now somewhat clean of dirt and mud after trekking our long journey to Bellwood. And it took a moment, but a gleam of recognition took over her features.

A weak smile splayed across my lips. "Hi, mom."

It only took her a second to fling the door open and throw herself at me with a huge smile spreading across her features the way a wave spread across the ocean, but this smile didn't dissipate like a wave would. It remained there for what felt like an infinite amount of time as she clasped me in her arms tightly to her chest. Tears spilled down from her eyes and fell onto my shoulder as she held me like only a mother could hold her daughter.

I quietly wove my arms around her too, focusing on drinking in this moment. I hadn't seen her for four years. Four years had passed since she last saw me. And I was a teenager now. I had grown up so far beyond any expectations. I had learned so much without school and without my family… I had learned everything that I had ever needed to know off of the streets, from being with Kevin…

"Gwen," she murmured into my hair, voice shaking as more tears kissed her cheeks before falling from them like a waterfall. Streaks of moisture stained her skin. "Gwen, sweetie." She stroked my hair, messing up everything that Kevin had just fixed. "Gwen, you're back."

I nodded silently, feeling myself beginning to cry. And it wasn't long before I was crying, not making a single sound, of course.

This felt like some sort of special moment. It felt like something that I should've been bawling my eyes out over. I should've been falling to the ground, collapsing under the force of this one moment where my heart was soaring and I was finally reunited with my family, my mother. Family. That was what I had been longing for all these years.

I held her like I'd wanted to all this time. All this time I'd only wanted someone to love me, to know that someone missed me.

"Gwen, we were so worried…" Her voice strayed off, clearly distraught after years of being so sickeningly wrought with this pain of not knowing where I was, how I was, if I was even still alive… "We didn't know…" She kept stroking my hair; I had flashbacks to when I was a little girl and she did the exact same thing every time lightning crashed through the heavens or when thunder rattled the sky. She was always there for me and now I was back and ready to be welcomed home again.

I didn't know how long we stood there, basking in that moment, but I knew I loved it. I loved every second of it. I had missed this time, so much of it, that I didn't know if I could go back to the reality where she wasn't holding me in her arms. I needed this moment just to remember what I was alive for.

When she finally let me go and held me out at arms length to see how I was, she began to rub her hands along my arms for any scars or bruises or wounds. My mom began to watch my every move, every flicker of my eyes she was following intently without missing a beat. "Gwen, sweetie, are you hurt? Are you alright? What happened?" Her tone was one of obvious concern.

"Ben should've told you," I explained quietly, holding one wrist with the other hand. "He can tell you later or whatever." I had to take a minute to breathe and let this moment sink into my mind, never to be forgotten. "I'm just so glad to be back."

My mom continued to check me over, running her finger along the long, bright white scar that stretched up my forearm before looking for more old wounds. There were plenty, but none of them had scarred like the first had. "I'm so glad you're safe." Once again, I was drawn close to her and embraced with the biggest hug I had ever gotten in my life.

This time, I pushed away faster, trying to adapt to this whole situation. Part of me was screaming whenever I was there for too long. It almost felt like the talons of a Necrofriggin threatening to hold me down and never let go, but part of me knew this was family and that I had nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. When I had put at least a foot or two of space between us, I felt a little bit better. The first time, it had been an old welcoming that had been too long overdue. Now, it was almost smothering. "Mom," I said, taking in a gulp of the moist air that coated the town. "This is Kevin." I looked over my shoulder to be sure that he was still there.

Loyal like a dog to its master, he was still there. His eyes were downcast until I said his name, and then he looked up dark eyes haunted with some suppressed memories that I knew he would never talk about. He gave the tiniest half-smile I had ever seen. "Hi, Mrs. Tennyson."

Squinting at him for a moment to take in the bad boy demeanor and scarred limbs and clearly beaten up face that was laced with a few marks of dirt and dust here and there, she stared with uncertainty lingering in her features. "Who is this?" she asked, obviously wary of his appearances and shady gaze.

"He saved my life."

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**A/N: Again, happy birthday to my anonymous reviewer, Alice! She wanted me to post this yesterday, but it took me longer than expected with plot issues and such. No reviews means no new chapter so start reviewin'! Also, eight chapters left!**

**~Sky**


	19. Breakaway

**A/N: Shorter, yes, but I was delaying this chapter because I had to find a way to write this. And now that I've found what I want to write, I shall write. Sorry about the length. Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. At all.**

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If it was ever possible to have an elephant that didn't even fit in the room, that was me. I don't think I had ever felt more awkward and out of place than I did at that exact moment.

First it was the scrutinizing eyes and the disapproving stare. Then she looked me up and down like she was sizing me up. At that point, I was suppressing my instinct to just come out and dropkick her. I wasn't a bit fan of being looked at like prey to be chewed up and spit out. And Gwen's mom looked like she was going to eat me for breakfast. Honestly, she did.

The funnier part about being the elephant in the room was that we weren't even in a room. We were standing on Gwen's freakin' porch.

So after Gwen's mom had stared me down, looking into my soul and digging around in there, she finally turned back to her daughter and continued to ooze about how much she had missed her and blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, I love happy endings as much as the next guy, but I was seriously feeling like the training wheel on a bike that just wouldn't come off. Like I was something not even a wrench could fix. No, it wasn't just the glare and the critical analysis I'd gotten from her mom. It was the way this whole neighborhood was something completely foreign to me. It took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn't just the neighborhood; it was this world, this realm, this dimension. This whole place was foreign.

And even Gwen was becoming foreign. In the Null Void, she had picked up on my slang, dropping the last few letters of words like I had a tendency to do. She was talking all proper with her ma again. We were on completely different wavelengths. I was still in the fight to survive mode whereas she had gone soft again in a matter of moments. She didn't need to worry about finding food or a place to sleep anymore. Gwen had a home to go back to. It was big and beautiful and incredible...

And it made me feel smaller.

I was pretty sure that we'd spent about a third of our lives in that dimensional prison and, for some reason, we had suddenly grown apart. After all we'd been through, I was on the back burner without even knowing it. I was always either the elephant in the room or the third wheel. Now wasn't any different.

They kept chattering like a couple of chimps. Of course, I never wanted to compare Gwen to a chimp before, but now that she had reverted back to the state I had found her in, she was someone else. Even after everything we went through, after everything I did for her, after all those times I protected her... All that was forgotten after being in the comfort of somewhere she could call home.

Love means nothing compared to family, does it? It's just another word in the ocean of this stupid English language. And after all the times I saved her goddamn life...

Maybe I wouldn't have been taking it so hard had I not been neglected as a child. I was usually pretty used to being on my own for most of my life. Met Ben, made a friend. Got trapped in an interdimensional prison. Friendship got me nowhere. When Gwen came along, I gave the whole friendship thing a second chance. Friends turned to best buds which developed into lovers and then we were in that one moment where I was the dust of a distant memory.

Yeah, fuck friendship. It gets you left behind every time. Fuck it. Two chances. Not a third. Not a third chance.

I hooked my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans and watched the sidewalk. I was losing the girl I knew each second. That girl who I had bandaged, who I had rescued, who I had _loved_...

Damn love. Fuck it.

Gwen's back was turned to me. I knew she wouldn't hear my footsteps as I walked away. I had a few scores to settle. She had brought me to the right place and then decided to leave me behind at the wrong time. If only she had been paying mode attention... If only the goddamn world had waited... Maybe if her parents hadn't been home... Maybe if they had moved... All these thoughts were running through my head as I carefully walked my way down the sidewalk without a sound. My footsteps were nearly silent. Gwen was too wrapped up in her conversation to even consider listening for me.

I was off her street in a matter of minutes. I had walked past all those perfect houses and past all those big buildings that looked like they had been ripped right out of those home makeover magazines. Pristine white picket fences. Gardens of red roses. Golden retrievers playing in emerald yards. This was where she belonged.

I belonged in a city of darkness. I belonged in a place where the crime rate was higher than I could count and where drugs were sold on every corner. I belonged in a place where my survival instincts could be put to use instead of just making me paranoid. I had to be somewhere else. This wasn't home. This could never be home. No. Not for me.

So I kept my thumbs hooked in my pockets and kept my eyes on the big blue sky. I was just glad to be free, out from beneath the bloody red. Free. And alone.

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**A/N: Next chapter could either be easier or harder to write… Sorry about all the angst. It's just how I want to express this chapter. Reviews are great!**

**~Sky**


	20. Giving Chase

**A/N: Requested by a fan on my Facebook fanpage. So here ya go! Another chapter of "Prisoners of the Void". I was putting off this chapter because I wasn't sure how I wanted to write it XP**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Idea is by Crushed Hale.x and it's in Gwen's POV.**

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I was feeling so good for a while. It was going perfect. I was with my parents again. My heart was soaring, I was totally in Heaven, loving every second of this new freedom. Freedom, family, a blue sky, trees, grass, dirt, bunnies, butterflies, picket fences, rose gardens. This was the place I had wanted to be in all along. Here. Here was home. Here.

My mom had ushered me into the house and my dad had come home, not bothering to shut off the car or even put it in park. As soon as he had pulled in and seen my red mane through the doorway, he had leapt out of the driver's seat and flung himself up the sidewalk to get to me.

My dad had almost the same reaction as my mom, but he was much more emotional. His tears were staining the shirt that hung too tightly to my frame, and his eyes quickly became blotchy and red with the crying. He was clinging to me as if for dear life. His glasses were mashed up against my shoulder, the corner of the black frames digging into my skin. He held me like I was the only precious thing in the world.

I had almost always felt that my dad cared about me more as a person than my mother did. She just wanted that perfect child that she could gloat about to all her book club buddies. Not my dad. He talked about me like I was a person and like I was the apple of his eye. Maybe because I was. I'm not sure. But he treated me more like a human being more than my mother ever could.

But my dad clung to me so tightly that I almost felt suffocated. Part of me was desperate to have him hold me like that forever, but the instincts that the Null Void had drilled into me seemed to kick in; I was instantly edgy after more than a few minutes of having him latched onto me. I had to eventually ask him to back off because I still had a little personal space issue from being a prisoner of the Void for so long.

"Gwen," he breathed, his brown eyes boring into my green ones, "where in the world were you?" My dad's voice was breathless, desperate, ecstatic. I mean, I would've been the same way too had I lost my kid for four years and never hoped to see her again. Just saying. I totally understand where he's coming from with this insanely dominant paternal instinct. It's almost scary. The Mama Bear thick that everyone references to? Yeah, I have Papa Bear.

"I was in an interdimensional prison," I told him. Yeah, like he would understand that. I was just kind of hoping that maybe Ben had explained the Null Void somewhere along the line and that maybe there was a possibility that my dad would be able to comprehend the notion of there being multiple dimensions instead of just the three we saw and then the other planets. There's an entire universe out there. To think that I've only seen snippets of it... "The Null Void."

His mouth gaped open for a long moment as he tried to fathom this thought. Dimensions and stuff like that never exactly settled well with people who hadn't been living there for years. I had picked it up after being there for so long. You learn what you live through. Live and learn, that's what the saying is. I blanked on it for a minute there.

Maybe it was the word prison that threw him off, but he stared at me like I was insane until his eyes finally cleared of the clouded confusion, and he just seemed to accept this explanation. Accepting isn't necessarily believing nor is it understanding, but it's recognizing that there might be something beyond explanation. But my dad seemed to get it well enough to move onto his next question. "How did you get out?"

"I made a portal with my mana." Because that answer made as much sense as the Null Void. "I'm an alien called an Anodite. I can control the life energy of organisms and turn it into pink portals and big blasts of energy and stuff. It's like a super power." I gave him my biggest, most innocent smile and tried to pretend like this answer made sense to him too. He wouldn't understand, would he? He didn't know. I had been trained to be alien savvy in four years under a crimson sky. Now I had blue overhead and I was ready to take on the world.

"Yes, your grandmother was an Anodite too," he said, fixing his glasses and giving me a little look that said "Sorry we didn't tell you earlier". My dad's face softened. "Are you hurt? Are you hungry? Do you need anything?"

And he was back in concerned parent mode. Which I was perfectly fine with. "I got hurt a lot, but Kevin always patched me up." I rolled up a little bit of my sleeve to show him the scar I had gotten on my forearm in my first few days living in that Hell. "He always took good care of me." I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see his dark form standing there in the shadows or to see him still lurking outside the front door.

Kevin wasn't there.

"Who are you looking for?" asked my dad as my mom looked on, not caring, oblivious to the fact that the guy who had saved my life more than once, the guy who had brought me back to them, was gone. She didn't want a criminal hanging out with me. He had been in the same Hell as I was, but he was no criminal. Not anymore.

"Kevin," I whispered, knowing that he had left. Tears stung at my eyes as pain nagged on my heart. He left me. After all we'd been through, after all the shit he went through to save my sorry ass... After being alone together for so long, he had left me... "Kevin..." My voice had turned into a pitiful whimper.

He was my life when we were hiding out underground. He was the one who had put in the effort to keep my alive all those years. I couldn't provide food. I couldn't get us firewood. I couldn't do anything. For four years, he had taken care of me like he actually cared. But did he ever really truly care? Now he had left me. Was I just a tool? Was I his escape? Was that all he had wanted me for? To get back home so he could get his revenge?

Now that we were back on Earth... Now that we were back in Bellwood...

"Kevin." My tone was fierce. Because I had led the lion right to his prey. I tried to ignore the pain that clenched my chest tightly. "Does Ben still live on the other side of town?" I asked, turning my attention back to my parents as they stood there with worried looks. They just wanted me to stay with them. Now that I was already asking about Ben and considering leaving, it was no wonder that they were worried about keeping me close.

I was lucky that my dad was the first to answer; my mother would've dodged the question and found an excuse to keep me here. "Yes, he still lives over there. Why?"

Him and his questions...

"I have to… I have to go…" And after taking a few steps away from my parents and out of my house, I sprinted out of there as fast as I could, adrenaline coursing through my system. I could only hope that maybe I could make it to the other side of town fast enough. I could only hope. Odds were good that Kevin was going to get himself killed, and I had to stop him.

But the only way to get to the other side of town fast enough to stop him with his hour head start was to make a portal. I needed a portal to save Kevin from himself.

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**A/N: Well, now we've got some problems now don't we, Gwen? Review and you'll find out what happens next sooner!**

**~Sky**


	21. Hunger

**A/N: The end is in sight, my dearies. Only a few chapters left. Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: Idea by Crushed Hale.x, written by Skylark Evanson, characters by an of Action.**

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To kill him wasn't just a quest. It was a mission; it was my duty.

It may look like a petty little thing, something stupid. It's not just an old wound that still needs to be licked. It's not just another scar that I bear. It's what gave me all the other wounds and scars. It's what turned me into a monster before, and it's what's ruined me again. Ben's always been staining my hands red with blood. Dark, thick, sticky red blood.

I used to be innocent. I used to be. I was innocent a long time ago, unable to even hurt a fly. Literally. And four years in Hell can turn me from an innocent into a murderer.

Ben was going to feel my full wrath. I wouldn't spare him. Why did he deserve mercy when I had been shown none as a child? Maybe he'd been kind to me once, offering to take me in that one time after I had nearly burned that bridge in New York, but that was all. After I had turned him down once, there was no going back for me. None.

And stupid me for trusting his cousin. Wait, let me rephrase that. Trust isn't the right word. Stupid me for _loving_ his cousin. She was my whole world, my life, my everything. I'd been determined to protect her from anything that would leave a scar on her soul and now she was stabbing me in the back with a knife, unbeknownst to her that I was ready to finish off her cousin in a heartbeat. All I had to do was find him.

Gwen had been babbling enough in the bus ride here and everything else for me to get my bearing around Bellwood. Little things like how far the walk was, what direction I would have to walk, approximately how many streets I would have to cross, how many lights there would be, the style of his house, how the garage was, and all that jazz. I'd learned a little bit. At least enough. That was it. That was all I needed to know so that I could track him down and take him out.

As I paced down the perfect cement sidewalk down that perfect street in that perfect town in that perfect place, I knew that this wasn't where I belonged. Trailer parks were more my speed. And if not trailer parks, subway stations. Or a cardboard box. I didn't belong in a piece of perfection. I only ruin perfect. Harvey told me that right before I left. I figured he didn't mean it, but that didn't mean it took away the hurt.

The reason I needed to take down Ben wasn't because of what he did to me. It was because he had let his cousin have her life ripped away, have her whole entire being torn into a different dimension, leaving whatever she had loved and cherished behind to live in a world of eternal suffering and never-ending bloodshed. Gwen was too innocent to be tortured with that. Some of us belong in places where we know when the end will come. Some of us need to be reminded that we're beautiful and don't belong in Hell. I was the former, she the latter.

I was getting her cousin because he had let her rot in that prison for so long. I had helped her along, if you want to call it that, but she was never meant to be in there in the first place. I had never bothered to ask how she had gotten in there in the first place just as she never asked anything about my past. They're not the same thing, but about as close as either of us were willing to touch with a ten-foot pole.

So when I came up on his house and found that the front door was open, I wasn't afraid. I stepped right up on his driveway and walked up towards that open front door as a blonde woman walked past the see-through screen with a basket of laundry balanced on one hip. She paused as if the corner of her eye had caught the sight of me before she swiveled her head in the direction of the other side of the house and called out, "Ben, one of your friends is here!"

If only she knew how big of a lie that was.

Without going any further, I stopped about halfway up his driveway and just stood there with my hands in my pockets and my eyes staring at that front door, waiting for the boy who ruined my life to emerge from within the house. Because he was going to pay.

The first thing I saw was the flash of his green eyes as he appeared from the left of the door. His hair was still a shaggy mop of brown as it had been years ago, and he still wore that goofy smile and wore that big, clunky watch on his wrist. The thing of my demise. That watch ruined my life. Forever.

It only took him a moment to recognize me. I wasn't a lean-built, shaggy-haired, creepy little kid anymore. I was big enough to beat him senseless. It wasn't hard to see the fear that was suddenly flickering in his eyes. He knew it was me. It only took him a few seconds to figure it out. I hadn't changed much. Just gotten taller, a little bit more muscular, much more dangerous. I wasn't a monster anymore, physically at least, but I was still deadly. Especially to someone who had double-crossed me and treated me like I was nothing more than road kill. I was just another speed bump on his way to hero-dom.

His face was instantly twisted into an expression of horror and overwhelming terror, the blood draining from his face. I only wished it had been the blood draining from his body by my hand. "Kevin," he breathed just barely loud enough for me to hear as he still stood inside of that screen door that separated us.

"Yep, Benji." I couldn't stop that sinister smile from spreading across my face. It was just so good to finally be within reach of that objective that I'd been aiming for the entire time of my imprisonment. All that time, I'd wanted him to fall under my hand for what he did to me, to _us_. I hadn't been the only one to suffer because of his mistakes. I deserved what I got, sure, but Gwen didn't. And he didn't save her. And he didn't rescue her. So why did he deserve my mercy?

Ben gave me one good look over. He was still small and scrawny to me. I towered at least a head over him. At least. He was scrawny, no muscle on his tiny build. He was just a fourteen-year-old kid. I was so much more than him. So much more dangerous, so much more deadly. Brutal, if you will.

People have always said that your experiences shape who you are. I'll just say that I'm pretty sure my experiences will allow me to kick his ass. "You ready to finish what we started, Tennyson?" I hissed through gritted teeth, rage flushing my face. He was the one who had ruined me. He was the one who had ruined Gwen. And for our suffering, he would pay dearly.

He rolled up one sleeve of his green jacket, peeling it back to show that watch in all its glory. "It's hero time!" But he couldn't slap his hand down on the dial of that watch. Not yet.

Because that was when the glow of pink behind me made us stop dead in our tracks, me turning to see Gwen as he stared at her with his mouth agape and wide, horrified eyes. His impossible future had finally come true; my wishes had finally become a reality. And Gwen was going to try and stop me. Go freaking figure.

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**A/N: Struggling. This is why I have to write all in one sitting or else it gets choppy and bad. Reviews are appreciated, but I don't feel like this chapter deserves them.**

**~Sky**


	22. Tormentor

**A/N: This story has totally been on the backburner. My bad! I'm just really slow. This and "Lullabies of New York" are getting totally neglected… I apologize. Time for a shorter, but fun chapter. I've been eager to write this… Had it planned since the beginning. Gwen's POV.**

**Disclaimer: No, I don't own Ben 10. If you look at all the previous disclaimers, you'll also note that I do not own this plot. And if you look again, I'm writing it! Must I remind you every time?**

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"Gwen?" He really sounded pitiful. My cousin's face was caught between shocked, heartbroken, relieved, surprised, and afraid. I felt bad for him.

I didn't know what was going on for all those years I was gone, but I knew the last thing I'd heard before leaving Earth for what I'd thought would be the last time. I'd heard his scared cry. "GWEN!" And for some reason, in the darkest nights when not even Kevin could settle me down to sleep, I'd hear Ben's call ringing in my ears. I'd hear him screaming out, desperate for me to be safe, to come back, to not fall into the darkness. But I had. And maybe all this time, he'd been beating himself up about it. I didn't know. How could I know? I wasn't here. I was in the Null Void. I was a prisoner.

I stepped onto the grass and out of the portal. It took no time in closing behind me. I hadn't really conjured it up; it had just appeared out of nowhere and I stepped through, putting enough faith in my abilities. I'd gotten us back to Earth, hadn't I?

"Hi, Ben." I tried to figure that I looked like a rabid girl. I mean, my hair was pretty messy still, my clothes weren't in the greatest shape, and let me just say that I saw myself in the mirror on the bus that we were on and I'm covered in a lot of red dirt to the point of looking almost tan. I wouldn't blame him if he were afraid of me. I did look a bit feral, a bit dangerous. My hair was longer and braided back as it lay down my back; I wasn't the same girl anymore. I'd changed so much in the course of… four years. Well, that made sense.

"You…" His forehead furrowed, dark lines cutting across it as he stared at me hard with a confused expression. "You're not… dead?"

No, I'm not. I was hiding for four years in a prison since you couldn't find me. We were just playing hide and seek the whole time. Guess what. I won! Wow, Kevin _did_ rub off on me… "I'm standing right here, Ben." I tried to force a bit of a smile. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife. Kevin was still ready to spring at any second, I could see it by the way his muscles were so defined and rigid. Ben was afraid; horrified to say the least. He was probably wondering how Kevin and I had appeared at the same time. Coincidence? Or conspiracy? And then there was me, stuck in the mix, wondering how to stop my boyfriend from killing my cousin. "I'm not dead."

There was a pause in the action. It was as if the whole world had stopped moving for a few moments. Ben and I locked eyes, his afraid and mine confident. We'd spent too much time with each other, friends forever, teammates in war. He was family. I didn't want to hurt him to keep him from hurting Kevin, but then again, I didn't want to hurt Kevin to keep him from hurting Ben. I didn't want to hurt anyone, but I was the only one who could mediate this. It was an impossible scenario.

Kevin watched me. I felt his eyes looking me up and down to see if I'd changed. I could feel his hurt. I'd betrayed him in an unthinkable way. I knew it too, that was what bothered me the most. I'd left him behind, even if only for a few moments, after he saved my life countless times and after everything we'd been through. I didn't blame him for being so possessive because I'd been the only person he'd talked to for the last four years. I was a bit possessive of him too, but he didn't have the concept of family like I did. He didn't have the option of having someone to go back to. Kevin's record was what distanced him from the rest of the world; it was what had put him in his confinement to begin with.

His dark eyes stared me down for the longest time before he sucked in a deep breath of the air. He always did that to calm himself down when he knew he was either about to do something stupid or when I'd done something stupid and he was about to call me out on it. Then Kevin's obsidian gaze swung back to Ben for a long moment.

Deciding, that's what he was doing. I should've been able to see it in his eyes. Choosing to side with me and live forever with the burden of knowing he couldn't kill my family or to take on his nemesis for revenge. His smile was a flat line. There was no familiar sparkle or glimmer in his eyes. His muscles were still tense, the gears of his mind spinning as he weighed the consequences. Lose me or lose his chance.

Four years leaves a lot of pent up anger. I would know. I was mad that I hadn't been found yet, but I don't think I had ever blamed Ben. Not that I remember anyways. Kevin knew he could blame Ben. He could blame me just as much. And Grandpa Max. We were all in on sending him to his penitentiary, but he didn't know that. He could only blame Ben; it was Ben he hated, Ben who he despised, Ben who he wanted to kill in cold-blood.

But then there's me, the other option. Side with me and I could keep him safe from Ben. Side with me and I could take him in. Side with me and I could protect him the way he protected me. Just joining me instead of attacking Ben would mean all of his problems ending, a new life unfolding right before his eyes. And his world would be repaired in the blink of an eye.

Kevin took a step towards me, his decision made.

I could keep him safe from Ben. I could take him in. I could protect him the way he protected me. I could fix _everything_.

I was what he wanted. I was what he needed. I needed to fix him, to heal him, to help him. It was who I was. It was what I had to do. He needs me more than he knows; I'm his bridge to humanity.

So he stepped towards me, making his choice. He'd side with me. He wouldn't attack.

I'm not completely sure on what happened in the heart-pounding moment after Kevin moved towards me. It was only a single step, but it was enough to set Ben off. His green eyes flashed with fear- I could see it- and all his pent up fear was released in a single moment. He misread the situation. He must've seen Kevin coming at me instead of him. Attacking his long lost cousin in an attempt at the ultimate revenge… It was something I could see Kevin cooking up, but he would never hurt me, I knew that. Ben didn't know that; Ben saw a monster, a killer, a beast. He didn't see the boy who had been haunted by demons all these years. He didn't see the boy who had saved me. He didn't see the boy who had brought me back from the brink. He saw someone who was going to hurt me.

All I knew was the flash of green light that made Kevin turn into a blackened silhouette for a long moment until it died away to reveal a blue-winged freak. The same kind from…

I fell backwards, cringing and cowering away, using my hands and feet to push myself away from it. It was hanging overhead with its beating wings and the sun reflecting off the black and blue that covered its form… The thing that had tried to kill us so many times… The thing that had scarred me. The thing that had left me battered and broken for so many years… The monster of my nightmares.

There wasn't any time for thinking. I was paralyzed with fear. Sure, I'd seen hundreds of these things, but never on my home turf. This was the place that I'd wanted to be for so long because it was safe from the demons and the torment. Then one of the most dangerous things in the Null Void is there, staring down at Kevin like he's prey. And all I know is screaming and shielding myself with my arms, unable to focus on trying to use any of my powers. I couldn't think. I could hardly breathe. I wanted to come home to be safe… To be safe from the monsters… To be away from the danger… To be safe… And the tormentors followed, that was all I could think of. I'd released them when Kevin and I had gotten through and now they were coming to kill us.

I could only watch as Kevin was brutally attacked.

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**A/N: Length isn't what I'd like, but I just needed my details in there. The lack of dialogue is compensated for with the imagery and the plot. Review?**

**~Sky**


	23. Her Screams

**A/N: Writing this is going to be harder than I thought it would be. Because Kevin vs. Big Chill isn't even remotely fair… Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: Still didn't come up with this plot. Crushed Hale.x did. Still don't own the characters. Man of Action does.**

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I felt claws. Sharp talon-like claws that drove into my back like spikes or stakes being stabbed into my skin. My first reaction was to drop and try to reach for the sidewalk. The sidewalk would provide my protection.

Strangely enough, I was a bit comforted by the fact that I was fighting for my own survival again. Not once had I been on the offense in the Null Void. Defense had been my side of the coin. But now it was another fight for survival just as it had been all along. It was another day in the Null Void for us.

Except for I was already out of practice. A little over a month out of the Null Void, a month without having to defend myself from monsters of the shadows and creatures of the night and suddenly I felt weak and defenseless, like any movement from my attacker could kill me. The concrete cement was the only thing that could get me anywhere near safe.

I felt the beating wings of the monster, the swishing sound of the air all too familiar. And Gwen's screams. Put the pieces together. I instantly knew it was a Necrofriggian. Better yet, I knew how to deal with it.

My fingers brushed concrete. The concrete engulfed my body in rock-solid armor, the only defense I had against talons and claws. And as soon as I had a good grip on my powers and knew I was in a suitable fighting condition, I was throwing my fists at the creature. I felt my punches connect with limbs and one with a wing, the beats faltering for scarcely more than a moment. But I kept punching, just trying to keep it away from Gwen.

Besides the sounds of the swishing wings that made the air pulse with life, my ears were ringing with Gwen's screams. She was afraid; I could hear it. It was almost the same scream as I'd heard the day she dropped into the Null Void with me.

After living with her for that long, I was overprotective, defensive of her. Whatever makes her scream pisses me off.

I took a step back to see the Necrofriggian hissing and spitting. Then... talking. Which was something new to me. Talking. They didn't talk in the Null Void. They snarled and growled and hissed... but they didn't talk. "I won't let you hurt her, Kevin." Feral emerald eyes glared at me, glowing with pure hatred.

Got it. It was Ben. Sort of forgot how that watch doohickey worked.

Instead of coming up with a quick remark, I looked to Gwen. And I don't think I'd ever seen her more pitiful. She was cringing away from me and from Ben, arms shielding her face and chest as she tried to move away from us. I knew she was afraid of Ben. We'd had weeks and weeks of safety, of shelter. Now, seeing this beast in her sanctuary… I could only imagine it as a terrifying experience. I'd been living in a world of monsters forever from New York to the Null Void and now Bellwood. It was like I was living a nightmare, but Gwen was used to this plush house in a plush neighborhood with nothing to worry about but dogs pooping in her yard. This was her haven, her hideaway. Now, it'd been corrupted by a monster. A monster that she didn't think possible in this universe.

So I launched myself at the thing, one fist colliding with its head as another punched at the monster's chest, knocking it backwards. Maybe Benji didn't know how to work this one… Maybe I was getting lucky. Because I'd seen some fierce Necrofriggians and they could all fight better than this thing was doing.

More screams from Gwen.

God, that pissed me off. I hated hearing her in pain. That scar on her arm… Looking at that every day doesn't help me and my guilt. At all. I want to help her. I want to save her. I want to be the thing she can always depend on when the rest of the world is going haywire. I want to be the guy that she can always count on.

Why I walked away at her house, I have no idea. I need her just as much as she needs me.

Then Ben flew out of the way, up into the air. I'm tall, but I'm not _that_ tall. "Just end this, Kevin," came the hiss from between fierce fangs. "We don't need to keep this rivalry going on any longer." Glaring eyes. Hatred seething through gritted teeth. Angry beating of wings. Flexing claws and talons. To say the least, he was not happy with me.

So he was planning to kill me. Great. Like old times.

His gaze found his cousin once more, his head turning to watch her cowering figure as she lay in the grass, unguarded and fearing for her life.

I couldn't help but look too. She looked so helpless… It physically hurt me to know that I couldn't go over and help her. I had a rivalry to end. But it was either kill him or have him kill me. Either side of the coin would end with Gwen losing someone. But how else to finish this? What other way out was there?

And then it hit me. Well, Ben hit me first, but then it hit me. 'cause why would Ben want to hurt his cousin even more? Using their bond to my advantage while saving my butt and possibly not killing Ben. Yes, I'm a genius. And don't you forget it.

As I was pinned down under sharp talons with sharp claws pressed to my neck with the cold breath of Ben hitting my face, I tried my best to squirm out from under him. I could've gotten out easily, but I didn't. "Just stop it!" I tried to shove him off only to find him too heavy to move. Necrofriggians were suddenly much heavier than I remembered. Especially when I couldn't think of anything other than to not kill him and to get to Gwen. "You're scaring her!"

A pause. Hesitation. He faltered. And looked to Gwen. Then back to me. And he must've seen something on my face that made him look again. To Gwen. Then to me.

No longer pinned down with sharp claws at my neck, I pushed him aside instead of off just enough so I could scramble away. I hated having to wimp out on something like that, but it was for the best. The scenario couldn't get better, it could only get worse. So I made the best of a bad situation.

Moving towards Gwen was all I could do. I was on my hands and knees beside her in a heartbeat, taking her hand and pulling her close to me, trying to get her to stop crying and screaming. She was still terrified, but I could tell it was subsiding once I had her in my arms. Her face pressed into my shirt and her arms were thrown around my neck as she clung to me for dear life. I could only continue to stroke her hair and wipe away her tears.

Ben still stared at us as his cousin lingered in my arms, holding onto me like I was something important to her. It must've hit him like a ton of bricks when he put the pieces of the puzzle together. "Aw man…" A flash of green and the blue monster was gone, replaced by a brunette fourteen-year-old.

I continued to wipe away her silver tears. I wouldn't die. Not today.

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**A/N: Fight scene was weak and I know it. In this, the Omnitrix has just reset itself to suit Ben's teenage body so he doesn't know the full extent of Big Chill. That's why he didn't freeze Kevin. Now leave a review! I'll update as soon as I get back from writing camp. Adios!**

**~Sky**


	24. Final Day as a Prisoner

**A/N: My power came back on yesterday, the internet this morning. Lost power for five days. Big storms… Big, big storms… Power lost across town. It was bad… Anyways, this is what I did in some of my spare time.**

**Disclaimer: Nope, don't own Ben 10. Plot's by Crushed Hale.x.**

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Ben let us inside. He let me get Gwen on a couch and settle her down so she could explain what was going on. Not like Ben would listen to a criminal like me. Especially not after I just tried to kill 'im.

I'm not sure why I had to back down, but I did. I had to, for some reason. It was my only option to go to Gwen. Not during the fight but before, when I had a choice. I went to Gwen. And I don't know why. But I'm pretty sure that had resulted in the fight, which nearly got me killed. I was lucky that I thought of retreating to Gwen then too. If I hadn't...

"Where have you been?" asked Ben as he brushed away the hair from her face; it was something I should've been doing. He was watching me as I kept my distance, standing with my back against the wall and a foot kicked up against it, sure to leave a print from my combat boot. Wary jade eyes analyzed my every move.

"Can ya leave her alone for five minutes?" I was set in overprotective mode. "She's scared shitless and you're freakin' her out more with all the damn questions." The New York in me was coming back out like a snake from its hole, spitting and hissing. The bits and pieces of Gwen that I'd picked up over the years were receding like they'd never existed. "Let her take a break. The Necrofriggian thing runs deeper than you know." My arms folded across my chest as my gaze swept her body for signs of recovery from the mental beating she'd just taken.

His voice was hostile in a heartbeat, retaliation coming back at me like I'd asked for it. Reluctantly, I will admit that I was sort of asking for it. "Not like you helped much, attacking me the second you were free."

"I was takin' her home, Tennyson. I ain't the bad guy here."

He looked a little bit shocked, a little bit hurt. And maybe, just maybe, he was regretting attacking me. Ben pulled away from his cousin, eyes growing fierce quickly. He was ready to fight. It looked like he hadn't had a good battle in ages when he'd nearly killed me. He was out of practice with his old toy. He was still working on learning and such. Which was fine by me. It was probably the only chance I'd had to survive. "The only reason I'm not fighting you," he said, "is because I don't know who you are anymore and I don't know what role you played in helping her. You should be grateful you're not splattered on my front lawn right now."

"You would've kicked my can halfway up the block and back, I'll admit." I didn't want to fight him again. I hated to do it, but I had surrendered. To this puny little punk who couldn't lift a hundred pounds. "But you should be thanking me for bringing her back, not accusing me of attacking you." A satisfied smirk settled on my features. "Let's not forget who made the first move, Omnitrix-boy."

A scowl passed his lips and a low snarl came loose. "I should pound you to China and back. The block isn't big enough for the butt-kicking you deserve."

"You wanna bet?" A challenge. I liked it. Sure, I would die, no questions asked, but I'd die having some fun. And giving a damn good beating to my worst nightmare. I wasn't going to complain too much.

"Stop it, both of you."

Any threats I was about to lay out on the table were sealed right back up for later use. Benji could feel my wrath another day. My first priority was Gwen. She was the only reason (besides killing Ben) I ever wanted out of the Null Void. She was who I wanted to protect from the dangers of an intergalactic prison. She was my only one.

Seeing her coming out of a dusky haze, I was pushing off the wall and at her side within an instant, holding her hand and tucking her against me in the way that I could only hope was comforting. It was all I knew how to do. Hold her and wipe away tears. She'd cried endless nights because she knew she was going to rot and die in an eternal Hell before going to the real thing. Because we both knew that that was where we were all going. It's a prisoner's destiny, even in innocence.

I was lucky that she was still weak and scared to the point of holding onto me. Her hands found mine and her grip was tight. She let her head fall into the crook of my neck, her warmth radiating through my body as she used me as a full-sized pillow. Not like I cared or anything. Emerald orbs shut and silence stilled her tongue. Gwen clung to me like I was the only life preserver on a sinking ship. And she was mine. I was sinking in this new reality; she was the only link that kept me attached to my humanity.

It took a few minutes to wait for her heart to beat normally again._ Thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP_. Only then did I feel like I could pull away from her so she could face her cousin. He wouldn't talk to me without words of aggression.

"Ben, I need to tell you the whole story of what happened in the Null Void. You won't get how we came here if I don't explain it completely." She still leaned against me, my arm wrapped around her waist so that I could keep a hold on her if she needed me. I would always be there for her. Always. She gave me back my sanity. I gave her back her reality.

He gave us cautious and wary glances. A bit of confusion laced his countenance, but he seemed like he wasn't as angry or vengeful as he had been before. Then, as if on command, Ben nodded, sitting down in a chair to prepare for the worst. He bent forward a little bit, elbows on his knees, hands hanging down by his shins, and listened to Gwen as she began to tell the story of two kids who got screwed over in this fucked up world. The story of a couple of prisoners who'd ended up in a pretty damn good life under a satanic red sky. It wasn't for the faint of heart nor was it for small children, but it was our story and it went a little something like that.

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**A/N: Next two chapters will be epilogues. Two of them. Yeah, 'cause I had to. Anyways, review! I apologize for the length, but that's exactly how I wanted to end the main story. Just like that.**

**~Sky**

**P.S. Yeah, I know I quoted "Darkstar Rising" ^.^**


	25. Kevin's Epilogue

**A/N: So I slacked off in this fandom for a few days and then caught up last night like it was no sweat. I love this show. But I'm not getting as many reviews and I'm feeling a bit unloved over here so I'm jumping to what I'm more interested in at the moment. When the show comes back on, I'll be doing better. Kevin's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10.**

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It wasn't all perfect. I got away pretty good. Ben believed every word of what Gwen said while I held her in my arms, listening to her tell my whole life story without even knowing my deepest darkest secrets. It sounded good when she said it. I wouldn't complain.

I couldn't get away too easy though. Max, who was alive and still wearing that stupid Hawaiian shirt, said he needed to show me how to properly use my power. So he took me off on a summer road trip in his lame-ass RV, just the two of us, riding off into the vast, unknown world.

Well, unknown to me, anyways. I only lived there for half my life. The other half was in Hell, but whatever.

It was every day, non-stop training. I was always working to shoot something down or to knock the stuffing out of something else or try to get control of a ship or car and knock out whatever was driving it. It was my life for three months. Pure training. Working out from six to eight. I had time to burn before Max would wake up. Then we'd train. All across the country. That was cool.

He did an almost home-schooling sort of thing for me, too. Max cracked out some old books, everything from the dictionary to a high school biology textbook. He snagged me a notebook from a drug store and a pack of pens before slapping it all down in front of me and said we'd be making up for lost time. It wasn't bad. I learned about osmosis, about color pigments, about bone structures, light spectrums... It was everything I'd ever need.

And I think the best part was that he gave me a giant Sherlock Holmes book. Everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written. A thousand pages worth of words.

So I caught up on about four years worth of schooling in three months. It was the coolest thing. Ever. I loved it. And I guess I never really realized how much I missed learning until I had it back. That stupid saying? "Don't know what you got 'til it's gone"? Yeah, that's true. Never forget it. Appreciate everything you have because one day, it won't be there anymore. And I was actually good at learning, that was the worst part.

I guess Gwen rubbed off on me. Knowing I'd get back to her once summer was done was my end goal. Getting back to the girl of my dreams, the one who could take care of me and show me right from wrong. The one who made me want to be better. Because now I was studying, practicing, learning, listening. Things she could be proud of.

Gwen filled my head a lot. Whenever I was daydreaming while staring out into the barren landscapes we'd drive through, I'd imagine myself in the driver's seat of a rockin' green car with some black racing stripes and a massive blower on the front and her in the passenger seat, hair flowing behind her as the wind blasted through the open window. The thought of me being able to go back at the end of it and have her hug me and welcome me home like I belonged there. Because maybe I'd finally found a safe place to stay. A place where people wouldn't want to kill me every twenty minutes. A place where I could properly take care of her.

With Gwen, I wanted to be able to drive her to school. I wanted to be able to pick her up for lunch and take her out to a shitty place and make her laugh 'cause I put straws up my nose or something. I wanted to have her be my girlfriend the right way. The Null Void isn't the right way, I'll just tell ya that right now. The Null Void is, like, the anti-right place to live.

Maybe I could start over. Call my mom. Ask her to forgive me. Maybe make amends with Harvey, if that was at all possible. I'd torched the guy's house... Maybe I could repair the damage done in the past. Start with a clean slate, wipe away the past. That vacation was like hitting the restart button on my life.

One of the best parts of that summer was that Max would tell me stories about my dad.

I heard how he always jumped into things headfirst and usually ended up in a medical bay. I heard about how he had wicked aim with any gun someone could put in his hands. I heard the story of how he met my mother. I heard about how he died. I heard about every glorious moment of his life while he was partners with Max Tennyson. And it was great. Some of the greatest memories I have are of listening to old stories in that damn RV.

And then there were times I'd fall asleep reading my Sherlock Holmes or flipping through the static-filled radio stations and then wake up in the morning in one of the bunks in the back of the RV with a heavy blanket on me and a pillow under my head. For once, life was feeling normal.

And as soon as I got home in early September, things got even better. Finally, things were turning around. Karma wasn't a bitch anymore. I guess taking care of Gwen had saved me more than I thought it ever would.

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**A/N: So there was one epilogue. Next should be longer. Reviews are great. Thanks for reading.**

**~Sky**


	26. Gwen's Epilogue

**A/N: Rawr. Alright, final chapter. I know I completely twisted the plot from the original scenario I was given. I know Crushed Hale.x wanted it to be focused more on Kevin and Gwen getting revenge on Ben, but I twisted it in my Gwevin mindset and wove it into this. I'm so sorry for that, but I still think people love it and that it's popular, so I guess _maybe_ that makes up for it. Thank you so much for the idea, I could never be grateful enough. Gwen's POV.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10. Idea is by Crushed Hale.x. Written by Skylark Evanson.**

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"So he'll be back in twenty minutes?" asked Ben, circling me like a vulture, rubbing his hands together and just walking. Almost pacing, but not quite. He ran a hand through his hair. Clearly he wasn't capable of focusing on this. He was afraid more than anything. I could see it in his eyes. He couldn't do this. For Ben, the rest of his life would be divided between trying not to kill Kevin and protecting me. Either way, he wasn't gonna be able to do this. He plopped down next to me.

I checked my watch. I never thought I'd ever be able to miss having a watch. But I did. A lot. "Fifteen minutes, actually." I shook my arm back down to my side as I sat out on the porch with Ben right by my side. "Think you'll live?" By my call, he wasn't going to last. No way in Hell.

He twitched a little bit and looked at his wrist only to see the Omnitrix planted there. As always. His eyes strayed to the sky in a distracted way. "Doesn't tell time," he huffed.

"Never has."

He snorted his disgust and got up to pace more. "Are you sure about this, Gwen?" My cousin looked down at me with a bit of concern written across his face. "He's a criminal and dangerous and-"

"And I love him, Ben." I just loved saying that. I wanted to know that this was how it was always going to be. Forever and always. I fixed my hair, pulling it up in a ponytail. It was still long, but I'd trimmed it up from the state it'd been in from the Null Void. "Can't you please just trust me? Please?" I looked up to him with a desperate plea written in my face as I set my eyes to 'begging puppy pout'. There was no way he could refuse that. No way.

He sighed and sat down again. His impatience was obvious. "I still can't get it out of my head. You. In love with a convict." He shook his head, the shaggy brown mop covering most of his face as he looked down at the stone sidewalk that led up to my house. "I always thought you'd do something stupid someday, but I did not expect _this_." He scuffed at the stone with one rubber-soled shoe. "You make me think you're dead, then you show up out of nowhere with an attack dog gone boyfriend, and now you want him to live with Grandpa like that'll solve all his problems."

"His mom's coming," I assured Ben with a knowing and playful glare. "She'll be here in about two weeks, but until then Grandpa Max can take care of him." I fiddled with my hair while subconsciously keeping my ears tuned for the rumbling sound of the Rustbucket. I hadn't seen Kevin in three months. It felt so weird to not be with him after four years of seeing him everywhere I looked. I missed his smug smiles and his dark eyes and every stupid thing he ever did.

Of course, I'd put my life together in a heartbeat. I'd taken a summer school course for six weeks, five hours each day to cover for the classes that I'd missed over the years. It only took away two years of school that I'd missed, but I'd be going into… high school this year. Apparently, Kevin and I had been wrong with our time keeping. Five years in the Null Void. Or at least five years away. We'd been coming up on five years when we'd escaped and in the month or so it took us to get back to Bellwood, we'd hit five years. I was fifteen, him sixteen. Our lives had withered away before we even knew what was going on.

"You really think that'll last?" asked Ben as he looked at me with all seriousness in his gaze. "He… He just doesn't seem reliable to me. He ditched you at your place to chase after me… He can't keep still for more than a few minutes…"

"I trust him, Ben. He's better now. Grandpa Max calls me with updates. He's settled down." I wasn't sure how true that'd be, but I knew Kevin would still retain some traits from New York and the Null Void. His paranoia about everything being quiet and perfect. His rough side with the language and the ferocity. His shaggy and dangerous appearance that gave off the 'don't fuck with me' vibe. That was just Kevin. Sure, he'd still be a little edgy and a little strange, but he was a quick learner. I trusted that he'd be better in no time; or at least that he'd learn to change his ways when introduced to a less hostile environment where his actions had to reflect the atmosphere. "He'll behave."

Ben shrugged and sighed. He scuffed his shoe against the stone again. "As long as you have reins on him, I believe you, but if he steps out of line even once-"

"Ben."

He paused, sighed, and slumped. One hand ran through his hair. "Alright. Just make sure you keep an eye on him, Gwen. I'm not afraid to use the Omnitrix if it comes down to it."

"He reads books, Ben. He studies. Grandpa Max said he's doing better. He's been training to hone in on his powers and working to catch up for all the years he lost from New York and the Null Void. We're both working hard to fix our lives." I thought I heard a car rumble past, but it was just a car. There was still no sign of Grandpa's RV. "And if you don't trust him, why do you trust me? I was with him all that time."

"You're my cousin."

"Yeah, because that excuse fixes everything. I could kill you right now without a care in the world, but I don't because you're family and I just got out of prison." I pulled a loose strand of hair away from my face. "Ben, you really need to stop thinking. Your head's going to explode."

He smiled and then looked up to see the Rustbucket rolling around a corner with two people sitting in the front seats, one with gray hair, one with ebony. I saw it too and stood up from my place on the porch, fixing my blue skirt and pushing that stray strand of hair behind my ear. "They're here," I said.

"A little early," he commented in a passive tone.

I gave him an elbow as the Rustbucket pulled a U-turn in the street so that the side door could be opened up right to the walkway of my house. I walked a little ways down the sidewalk only to see the door open, Kevin standing there with his usually roguish charm and a bag of clothes slung over one shoulder and a book clutched in one hand, his dark eyes focused on me with a burning intensity. The bag was dropped from his shoulder and the book was thrown right on top of it, a faint smile reclaiming his features as he saw me.

If there was one thing I learned from him, it was to never waste time. I bolted forward, my bare feet pounding along the hot stones until I found myself enveloped in his warm arms, my head still fitting perfectly into the crook of his neck, his dirty scent filling my nostrils, the way his hair tickled my face, the way he breathed my name. "Gwen…"

My arms were thrown around his neck, and his arms had captured my waist as he pulled me close, tucking me into his chest, kissing my hair, taking everything in. "Kevin…"

"So this is what humanity feels like," he whispered in my ear as I heard the Rustbucket's stairs creaking under Grandpa Max's weight as he got out of the RV. Kevin pulled me in a little closer, his hands fitting perfectly into the small of my back as if that was where they belonged.

"I missed it." And I did. I missed the feel of the sun on my skin. I missed the touch of real cloth. I missed the sound of birds chirping to wake me up in the morning. I missed the smell of cinnamon buns. I missed the world. I missed home. I missed reality.

He was quiet for a long moment and I had to pull away so I could figure out what he was thinking about. I always knew how to read him. Everything was always in his eyes. I saw that he was looking at the sky and smiling to himself like he'd suddenly figured out the meaning of life. And all he said was, "It's blue."

* * *

**A/N: Fin. Review.**

**~Sky**


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